


Scattered Coin

by Serindrana



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alphabet Fic Meme, Character Study, Drabble Sequence, F/F, Gen, POV Female Character, Smuggling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-23
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-30 00:48:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 36,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Combination_NC's example, an alphabet meme exploring our favorite lady smuggler. All drabbles take place within the same continuity, and range from a few hundred words to more extended scenes.</p><p>Some letters may have warnings - Athenril's life is not easy, and it's not always pleasant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Athenril

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Karl's Alphabet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/314291) by [Combination_NC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Combination_NC/pseuds/Combination_NC). 



There are people who say it isn't the name her mother gave her, and there are people who don't say it but doubt it with every breath they take. If she were other than who she is, she thinks she might doubt it, too. In a world of dead drops, counterfeit coin, unstable alliances and unshakable alliances, a name should be something donned and discarded both.

But Athenril is the name her mother gave her, and she keeps it close. It isn't just that the name is lovely, that it rolls from the tongue and fills her with an odd, private sense of joy. There's pride there, too. Pride that comes from living far from home, both physical and metaphorical. The Alienage she was born in is in Ostwick, another pathetic port town with far fewer apostates and blood mages, far less martial rule. And beyond that, in the cadence of the few stories her mother could weave for her, there's a home.

Halamshiral and Arlathan. She knows the names like she knows her own, and they feel the same on her lips. Her mother was no Dalish, and Athenril, even when she was a girl and got her arm branded in blue, has never wanted to be such. Her tattoo is not the same as the blood writing as the other elves, the ones who live outside the problems and outside of any one single home, always in search of a way back. She envies them, sometimes. They have their freedom, after a sort.

But she has her freedom, too, in every time a contact addresses a letter to A, in every time she sees herself in a glass and smirks. She is Athenril, the name her mother gave her and the woman her mother formed. It's a name she has never known or sought the meaning of. It's a name she doesn't care to.

Because it will always mean home, and striving, work and dignity. She has it all in those eight letters, and every time she says or writes it, hears or reads it, her back grows a little straighter.


	2. B is for Begging

When she's a little girl, she learns how to pickpocket while she's supposed to be learning how to beg. Her mother doesn't notice at first, how her little girl, barely eight years old, begins trailing after shems. It's a testament to their poverty that she doesn't scoop up Athenril into her arms and tell her _no_ , tell her that is dangerous, that it is death. Instead, she's singing with her worn and cracking voice, or she's trying her hand at roasting roots and tubers bought at jacked up prices from the local merchant. 

Athenril never strays far. She always stays where she can hear the singing or smell the fire, marking a circle around her mother as if on a tether. She's remarkably lucky. She watches other children play at it and practiced hands succeed at it, and she mimics them - though not always exactly. Where other little girls tug on the skirts of older men, gazing up at them with intentionally widened eyes that seem ready to spill forth tears, Athenril looks only for those people who are already distracted. Sometimes, she empties the purses of men her fellows have already marked. Sometimes she gets lucky.

Other times, not so much.

She learns the alleyways around where her mother settles for the day out of necessity. Where other children might have played in them, she runs full tilt, hides in crates and barrels that never seem to move, clambers up walls and hides on rooftops, gasping for breath and praying that shems are as stupid as everybody says. Her bones and muscles ache and sing as she grows. She'll never be tall, or broad, or strong, not even for an elf, not with an unsteady diet of often rotted grains and scavenged scraps, left-over charred roots that her mother couldn't sell. But she is quick and attentive, because she has to be.

It's only when she's older that she learns to beg, and she hates every second of it. She can't stand when she does it, because the temptation grows too great to trail and steal, and so she sits. She kneels, and her knees shake at the end of the day, sore and worn. She barely makes it half a year like that before she gives it all up.

It's the summer when her mother dies that she takes ship to Kirkwall. She doesn't beg her way onto the small coastline boat, and she doesn't beg her way off of it when they arrive at the Gallows. She doesn't hold her head high, because looking up always makes you vulnerable. She looks instead at how the men glance down at little elven girls tugging at their shirt hems, at how practiced hands slip in and out of shadows. She ignores the beggars' cries.

She starts again at the basics: winding out from a central point and learning every back alley she'll ever need. Kirkwall is far larger than Ostwick, with far more shady streets and far more promise. She's grown as tall as she ever will, as strong as she'll ever become.

She never begs again.


	3. C is for Carrion

There's a penned-off section of the Gallows, supposedly a holding area for the dead waiting to be cremated. In reality it's more of a midden heap, piles of bodies with no name attached, no home. But she can guess - all Fereldan. All fleeing the Blight.

She tells the small crew she's brought to be careful. They cover their mouths and noses with fabric just shy of being too thick to breathe through, and after a small bribe to a guard who really only needs a smile and a wink to let them through, they go to work. They pick through the dead with gloved hands, tugging at clothing and searching for trinkets. Most of the pockets have been turned out already; they aren't the first round of vultures to search for threadbare valuables. She doesn't expect to find much.

But she does find gold teeth. She does find little copper pins. She finds bit and pieces of polished stone that she knows she can get  _something_ for. And while the work is dirty, dangerous, potentially  deadly \- it pays.

And she's smart. They'll be fine, she's sure.

They avoid the bodies that have rotted the most and the ones with darkened veins. They work quickly and take breaks, washing themselves down with sea water if they have to. It takes three shifts. But when they're done, bones have been picked clean and pockets have been lined. It's a satisfying day's work, an addendum to the threads they tug at from their little rock in the middle of the harbor, even if the stench of death probably won't leave her hair and leathers for a fortnight.

That night, one of the boys asks if what they're doing is _right_. It's good for a short laugh. These are the same wretches she's found clawing at the bottom of gutters, that are willing to kill and intimidate and steal for her, and they ask if something is  _right_? But she can see it's haunting them, along with that lingering odor.

So she sits down with them. She shared bread with them. And she dredges up the few lines of Chant she knows, and she tells them,

_"All things in this world are finite; what one man loses, another has gained, "_

and if she's switched it around a little, nobody breathes a word.


	4. D is for Deniability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hawke and co. finally make an appearance. I deliberately left Hawke's gender unmarked, though I did go ahead and choose a class, as well as decide on Bethany being the surviving twin (for reasons that go beyond Bethenril tendencies). I do so love Carver, and should write something where he and Athenril interact. Maybe some other time!

Night at the Gallows is a strange thing these days, with all the fires that burn on stone floors, kindled with whatever the refugees can find and whatever the guard and the templars feel magnanimous enough to toss aside. It’s not the last night that Athenril will find herself here, she’s sure, but it will be the last for a fortnight or more.

That’s how long she expects it to take to settle in these Hawkes.

Nice name,  _Hawke_. Brings to mind birds of prey, with nasty claws and keen eyes. She’s never seen one up close herself, but she’s heard stories. She hopes the name is a good omen. It’s certainly better than  _Amell_ , with Gamlen still dragging his feet and his sister looking as if the aid of a smuggler is deeply… unfortunate.

But the older one is prickly, which is to say nothing of the broad-shouldered ginger that trails after them like a stray dog. Hawke steps in front of Athenril, and Athenril raises a brow, saying nothing.

“We’re sneaking off of this island,” Hawke says.

“Yes.” Athenril moves to step around the warrior, but is stopped by a matched step.

“I thought the agreement was that you would pay the bribe to get us in.”

“And I have.”

“Bribes,” the ginger one says, “usually have some  _effect_.”

“And they have.” Athenril looks for argument from the younger Hawke, but Bethany is toeing at the ground, arms over her chest, trying to look as if she doesn’t hear a thing.

She likes her, even if she seems a little naive.

“Well?” Hawke presses.

“Well,” Athenril says, “the templars and guards do need to keep up  _some_ illusion of deniability.” She sees the gap and strides past Hawke again, leading the small group down another flight of stairs. That’s all Kirkwall is, endless stairs and paths that tend to go nowhere much at all. This one, though, will end with a small dinghy that she’s sure one of them at least will object to. But the harbor is at rest tonight, and the trip easy, and it’s the easiest way.

“If,” she continues as she takes a corner and hears Hawke’s steps quick to keep up, “they see us leave, then there’s a risk that somebody might object. If they simply… forget to watch a certain part of the Gallows dock, however, and a few people slip through, well then- just an unfortunate mistake.”

She turns once they reach where the stone drops off. “The thing to know about Kirkwall, ladies, is that there’s quite the demand for blind eyes. Go through official channels and you’ll never get anywhere. Skirt them a bit, and you’ll get everywhere.”

Aveline scowls. “That’s-“

“Useful,” Athenril interrupts and steps aside, gesturing to the dinghy. “Now- Hawkes don’t mind the water too much, do they?”


	5. E is for Ethics

There comes a day when the templars offer her money for the names of any apostates 'she may know' in the wretched city of Kirkwall. They offer her a great _deal_ of money. They offer her so much money that if she says _yes_ and gives them a single mage, she would never have to risk her neck again. It won't buy a mansion in Hightown, but she's never wanted something so grand as that, not as a full-time thing.

But a nice little out of the way place in Lowtown with a convenient door out the back and to the roof and anywhere she needs it that's more than just a temporary hovel that's little better than an Alienage shack-

She doesn't take the bribe, of course.

A little house like that is tempting. She can't deny it. But every day she sees Hawke's sister, nervous and quiet and closed, and every day it reaffirms her first rule:

She does not deal in flesh. Not with slavers- and certainly not with templars.


	6. F is for Fallout

"You could have gotten enough gold for her to make us all _rich_ ," Tevin hisses as she steps off the dock and onto the solid stone of Kirkwall again. He fancies himself her second-in-command, but the truth is she's never trusted anybody enough to fill such a position. He's somebody she relies on, but she's hardly dependent, and she hardly cares for his counsel.

She waves a hand dismissively and walks on, setting aside the Gallows and templar offers where it belongs - in the midden of her brain.

" _Athenril_ ," Tevin presses, digging through the refuse to try and drag it forward.

"I've made my decision," Athenril says. She has another meeting to get to, one Tevin is _not_ invited to, just as he wan't invited to this one. Perhaps it's time to cut some tethers, shove the man out to sea and see if she's taught him enough that he can swim. Or maybe that's too dangerous - a weight around the leg, instead, to drag him down fast so he can't take her with him.

"How much money did those bribes cost us?"

Because Tevin, apparently, refuses to understand, or to listen, and there's a small worry that he'd turn bitter. "It's none of your business," she says, "because it did not cost _us_ anything. It cost _me_. And she earns it all back, and then some."

She thinks of Bethany, naive Bethany with the devastating eyes and the ability to set fires and freeze over a path in the harbor just when Athenril needs it. That's who Tevin means, and it's who the templars meant. The other mages rise and fall on their own merit, the one or two Athenril works with from time to time.

But _she_ -

"I will not continue to work with _dogs_ ," Tevin spits, and then he spits on the ground, too. She stops and turns to face him, arms crossed over her chest. "Especially ones who should be collared and leashed by templars."

He's a head again taller than she is, and broader, human and hairy and arrogant without enough balls to back it up. She doesn't even grant him a tilt of her chin. "No? I hear they are quite loyal, even without a collar. Moreso than a gutter rat."

His expression turns from dark to storming, brow twisting and face contorting. He doesn't like it when she pricks at his pride; he thinks he's useful, indispensible.

He's not. Not enough to stroke him until he preens.

"When you catch their fleas," he growls, "do remember that I _warned_ you."

"Last I heard," she says, lips curling, "rats have fleas too."

 

___

 

 _Rats have fleas_. She can't remember the last time her mouth got her into quite this trouble, and her breath stutters out, uneven and sharp, at the sound of metal-clad boots not an alley away. If it were a better day, if the job hadn't gone absolutely tits-up, she may have been able to think it all just coincidence. But it's not.

She knows it's not.

She's got pissed off self-proclaimed knights of the Coterie on her ass, and templars ready to shove down her throat, and Hawke is, as far as she knows, halfway across Lowtown, getting Bethany somewhere safe. Somebody had seen her face, torn off her veil, and it was too much. Athenril has to mobilize new bribes.

But to do that, she has to get out of this alive and not _totally_ fucked.

Athenril backs up to a stack of building materials that are already rotting and will never be used, and she scrambles up them, aiming for the roof. It'll be a miracle if the roof doesn't cave in under her, but she needs the high ground. She's got her fingers wrapped around the edge when she hears shouting, has herself half-hauled up when a weight strikes her back. Half-stunned, she scrambles to keep her hold but her fingers slip, and suddenly she's tumbling backwards.

It's not templars, she thinks as she hits the ground and shoves her calloused and practiced heel into her assailant's groin. He grunts and lets go, and it's her only chance to fall back, reaching for her daggers. She's going to run, not fight, but she needs to keep them off her-

"Tell me where she is, bitch," Tevin growls, and she almost laughs.

 _Coterie knights_ indeed. 


	7. G is for Gangrene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows directly on E and F.
> 
> Warning for implications of gruesome injury.

“Hold  _still_ ,” Hawke hisses, and Athenril grits her teeth and lets her head fall back against the crate she’s leaning against. Her knees are threatening to buckle and she can’t remember the last time she felt this much pain. It feels like the skin on her right arm has been flayed from fingers to elbow, and even with her steel stomach she can’t look at it for more than a few breaths without beginning to feel woozy.

“And what are you going to do?” she growls through gritted teeth. She doesn’t want her life or well being in Hawke’s hands, not even after saving the siblings from that bastard Tevin, now dead in a gutter with piss all over him; it’s not a matter of trust so much as it is of pride, and she digs her heel hard into the ground. “Tie it back on with your  _charm_?”

“No,” Hawke says. “Bethany!”

Athenril groans and closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to see the girl right now. She doesn’t want either of them to have any idea of what she’s done on their behalf. Coinwas the only protection she ever swore them.

Not her blighted  _arm_.

“Oh  _Maker_ -” Bethany gasps when she sees the damage, and she must have pushed her sibling out of the way, because Hawke’s grasp loosens on her shoulder and is replaced by Bethany’s gentler touch. “Maker’s mercy. I- I’m not a healer. I’m not-“

“As convenient as it would be for her to die and release us from our bondage, Bethany, I think we’d all appreciate it more if she  _didn’t_  get the rot and lose her arm,” Hawke snaps, and Athenril finds the strength in her to nod, to laugh unevenly.

“Get to it, girl,” she whispers, and Bethany whimpers.

And then there’s a soft, tentative touch at her brow and the blossoming spread of magic through and under her skin, and Athenril tries to banish the thought that Bethany is sometimes unsure and unsteady with her magic on the best of days when she’s not fighting for her family. Hopefully, fighting for her employer will be a decent enough substitute.

__

In the end, she loses only the use of her ring and little finger, and feeling up the outer side of her arm to the elbow. The flesh there is withered and useless, and she can’t so much as twitch her fingertips. She supposes she should be grateful. She fought for this, after all - a mage in the wings, though she did bargain for a hunting hawk instead of a graceless nurse.

Still, when she has a special glove fitted that hides the damage, that braces her fingers so she can still hold a weapon if she just relearns a few movements, she finds it in herself to offer a quiet thanks to a little mage girl who didn’t know what she was doing but tried anyway.

Money well spent.


	8. H is for Hospitality

“Go away, Hawke.” Athenril moves to shut the door, but her associate already has a booted foot in. Athenril has half a mind to crush it, or bruise it at least, but an injured foot is lost money and lost time, even more than an injured hand.

“It’s First Day,” Hawke replies with a measure of ease that is unfamiliar. “And so we’re continuing the grand old tradition of checking up on you. Open the door.”

“ _We_?” Athenril frowns, hand tightening on the makeshift knob. She’s still relearning how to grip two ruined fingers, even with her glove in place to help. They had contributed more to the strength of her hand than she had realized, and she’s been left retraining how to fight, blade clenched in her first two fingers and balanced by the metal that holds the others in place, but it’s tricky and she can’t run two styles in concert across two hands.

“Hi, Athenril,” Bethany says from somewhere behind her sibling. “We brought dinner, too.”

“I’m not in the mood for dog food.” She tries to shut the door again. Again Hawke stops her. The leather of her glove creaks as she tightens her hold.

“I thought we were past that,” Hawke says, lowly. “And Bethany cooked it for you. Open the door, Athenril.”

Half a year has changed the balance between the three of them (the ginger remains apart, aloof, clearly displeased and already looking for work when the year is up), and Athenril doesn’t particularly like it. Hawke grows more surly and confident in Kirkwall by the day. Bethany follows where her sibling leads.

But it is First Day, and as much as she would like to leave the Hawkes standing out in the sleet that turns all the Kirkwall stairs to ice and makes everybody miserable without providing the comfort of a pure white snow (that would have been piss and blood stained by day’s end, but nobody talks about that), she does know something of being a gracious host. Her mother had insisted on it. They had had almost nothing, not even a home of their own or even a steady shelter, but her mother had  _insisted_. Food for guests. Comfort. Whatever they had, shared.

Athenril wouldn’t go so far, but she does open the door on the tiny hole she’s taken for herself.

 _Not_ , she thinks, the little home in Lowtown that she would have liked - but it does. She keeps it clean and she even has a fire burning. Her belongings are stashed in caches around the room, hidden from most gazes, and it looks for all the world as if she is barely clinging to any semblance of comfort.

Hawke steps in, followed by Bethany with her veil still drawn up and a hood raised against the weather. In her arms is a pot with a cracked lid, and she holds it out to Athenril.

Athenril hesitates, then takes it and places it on the nearby table.

She watches as Hawke takes stock of the room and as Bethany drops her hood, tugs down her veil, and offers a small smile.

“How, exactly, did you find me, Hawke?” Athenril asks as the Fereldan takes a seat by the fire. “I prefer to be discreet about where I sleep.”

It’s Bethany who speaks. “We followed you. After your arm was injured- it was in case you ever needed us, we’d know where you were.”

“Nosy little thing,” Athenril says softly, and she thinks she sees Bethany blush. “Your idea?”

“Mine,” Hawke says.

“And what happened to it being convenient if I died and you were released from service?” Athenril asks, pulling the lid back. Bethany comes to her side and peeks in, then holds out a hand and wiggles her fingers. The stew inside begins to steam.

It doesn’t smell as poorly as Athenril had feared, and she murmurs a small thank you. The girl beams, then ducks her head.

“I’m not heartless, Athenril.”

“Practical is a better word.” She cants her head towards where a few worn wooden bowls are stacked in the corner, usually to catch drips from the roof. They’re a little wet now, but Bethany wipes them dry on her skirt. Useful girl.

 _Girl_ , Athenril reminds herself, and turns fully to Hawke, hands bracing on the table as she leans back. Her right hand twinges. She ignores it. Hawke is becoming too clever by half, and a show of weakness would be dangerous. Could be dangerous.

“Well?”

“I’m still getting my feet under me.” The Fereldan is stretched out by the fire, legs crossed easily. “As much as I’m not a fan of slavery-“

“Indentured servitude.  _Bargaining_.”

“As much as I’m not a fan,” Hawke continues, “it does serve as a sort of apprenticeship.”

Bethany returns to Athenril’s side, lifting the pot and messily serving out some of the stew. “We wouldn’t have enough money to pay the bribes to keep me safe without you,” Bethany says. Hawke’s nose scrunches up in disapproval at her honesty. Athenril turns to watch her instead. “We don’t have the connections yet, and we wouldn’t have known the streets and the rhythms without you as a teacher.”

“So is this a visit of gratitude, then?” Athenril asks, and Bethany sets the pot down with a shrug, nudging a bowl towards her. A twirl of a finger and the bowl is steaming in full.

“It’s First Day. It’s not like we have many other friends or family to visit.”

“And Gamlen is cooking,” Hawke adds.

“That too.”

Athenril glanced around the room. “And yet you leave your poor hound to suffer it.” Hawke’s mabari was not always present, but she marked its absence now.

“You don’t like people knowing where you live,” Hawke says as Bethany brings over food for them both. “He’d be a bit noticeable, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps you doglords aren’t so simple after all,” Athenril says with a snort, and she rubs the fingertips of her left, ungloved hand as if to clean them. She lifts the bowl to her mouth and scoops some of the thick meat and broth to her lips.

Hawke laughs at the insult and shrugs. “Not all the time, no.”

“I also wanted to see you,” Bethany says, and Athenril’s swallow turns unexpectedly harsh. She coughs to clear her throat.

“Is that so?”

The mageling nods, smiling sheepishly. “ _I_  like you, no matter what the others think. And I wanted to see how your hand was doing.”

Hawke sighs. “And I am forever incapable of denying my darling sister.”

Athenril is left unsure of what to say, beyond a muttered, “It’s fine.” It’s an unbalanced position that leaves her uneasy. She draws then on what her mother taught her, and she moves to one of the caches, a spot in the wall where a board can be pulled loose.

She searches for just a moment, then retrieves two items, crossing to the warm circle of the fire. She isn’t used to entertaining guests or to being  _liked_  as opposed to tolerated, and so she pauses first in front of Hawke, the one who is the least likely to respond in any quiet, intimate way. Athenril offers out a small bottle of Antivan brandy, opened but only barely touched.

Hawke’s eyebrows lift in question.

“Happy First Day, Hawke. To six more months of making sure you know where to put your muddy Fereldan feet.”

Hawke smirks, head inclined in thanks, and takes the bottle.

Athenril turns to Bethany, who is looking pleasantly bewildered.

“And to you,” she says, holding out a small hair comb decorated with Nevarran glass beads. “To six more months of keeping you out of trouble.”

The mageling flushes. “I couldn’t.”

“If it makes you feel better,” Athenril says, stepping close enough to tuck it into her curls, “I killed a man for it.”

Bethany blanches.

Athenril’s smile is lopsided and more than a little tense, and the displeasure in Bethany’s eyes as she reaches up to touch at the trinket tugs at something in her she’s not comfortable having tugged. She drops her mother’s mask of  _hostess_ quickly, turning away from them and shoving the lid back on the pot.

“Now finish eating and get out of my house. Next time I see you two here-“

“Understood,” Hawke says.

Bethany only mumbles a small, “ _Sorry_ ,” that tugs at that same little bit. Athenril scowls at the wall. They’re some of the best allies she’s ever had in Kirkwall.

But sometimes, she can’t wait for the six months to be over.


	9. I is for Independence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for nonconsensual (nonsexual) bondage, kidnapping, and threatened enslavement.

There is no greater horror than to be in chains.

She doesn’t care about abominations, about demons or darkspawn. It’s hard to find room to give the lurking monsters time when the ones what stride in full daylight are constantly there. She dodges them for most of her life: Tevinter slavers looking for new blood, twisted men who want a little pretty plaything, distant family members who think she would be better put to use in a dingy bed in a back room for any amount of coin her hips could earn.

And eventually, she dodges left when she should have gone right.

It happens as she’s leaving the Viscount’s keep, the ginger -  _Captain Aveline Vallen_ , now or soon enough, and doesn’t that just make her grin with the ridiculousness of it all - following after her. Athenril ignores the rattling of armor that’s worn more to intimidate than to protect within these walls until a sharp gauntlet closes on her shoulder and spins her hard around, shoving her against the wall.

“Captain,” Athenril grits through a false smile. “You just released me. I’d appreciate if you’d do the same with your  _fist_.”

“Not before we have a little private chat,” Aveline grits back. They’re outside the main complex, in the shadows just before the long stairs down, and Athenril notes rather unpleasantly that she doesn’t have anybody nearby. Not even guards ready to find fault with their new captain.

“About?” Athenril asks. “I thought you found no solid evidence against me.”

“Maybe not,” Aveline says, and the fury and determination setting her freckled and heavy brow were almost comical, “but you and I both know it’s only a matter of time.”

“Is it?” Athenril plucks at Aveline’s fingers which are digging far too deep. “I recall you pointedly keeping your distance and making Hawke be your go-between. I recall putting you only on the legal jobs at your insistance. I also remember you looking the other way quite a bit when Hawke had a job.”

“Your point?”

“You know nothing,” Athenril says. “And if you continue to threaten me, you’ll  _have_ nothing.”

“Is that a threat in turn, thief?”

“No. It’s an offer.” Athenril relaxes and Aveline doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself. “You stop clawing at something you can’t manage, and I start bringing you what you need to take down the nastier pockets in this fair city.”

“What happened to not working through official channels?” Aveline snorts.

Athenril smiles. “I’m not relying on you - it’s the other way around. And besides. You could probably use some  _skirting_  yourself.”

She ducks when Aveline’s hand releases to form a fist, then dances away, bare calloused toes on shade-cooled stone. Aveline, to her credit, doesn’t follow, but she also doesn’t give an answer.  _In time_ , Athenril thinks, and she slips into a small alley meant for defense in times of siege that leads along where the stairs drop off. In time, Aveline will find her feet and get to know Kirkwall a little better. The idealism will fade.

And Athenril will go back to not worrying about official channels.

She’s shimmying down the small hatch drop-off to take her back to street level when she hears the faint grinding of glass on stone. She twists, head at the level of the alley floor. Faint blue smoke curls from a tiny vial, and she has only a moment to swear - it’s one of Tomwise’s mixtures, she knows it all too well - before it hits her, making her head spin and her eyes bulge. Her grip tightens instinctively on the ladder rung as her throat burns, and she tucks her chin to her chest, grimacing and squinting and trying to see whatever shadows will approach.

Later, she blames the smoke fog for not thinking to draw her legs up from the well. A hand closes around her ankle, and she kicks, but the kick dislodges her hold on the rungs and she slips down, jaw cracking on the wood and hands scrabbling for grip. She twists and writhes, fighting on instinct.

 _I’m better than this_  is the last thought she has before the world goes dark, fabric over her head scented with another oil that brings oblivion.

 

___

She wakes up to the prickling pain of her arms trying to go numb. They’re wrenched behind her back and tied almost up to the elbows, impossible to slip and quite likely to dislocate her shoulders. It sets the tone - she’s somewhere dark with captors who don’t care if her body falls apart, but they’ve been far lighter on the leg binding.

She wonders why, and then decides it’s not a thought she wants to spare.

Her head still aches and her nose burns, and she tosses her head to make sure the fabric isn’t still binding her to blackness. It’s gone. She feels her cheek scrape against uneven stone, and she rolls to get her shoulder beneath her, her hips braced against the ground. She levers herself up and grimaces with the pain of it.

At least they aren’t out at sea, and at least they aren’t in a rattling wagon. That means they’re still in Kirkwall, because there’s nowhere close enough that’s made of worked stone - and the stone  _is_  worked, planed flat - that they could take her before she would wake up, not without leaving her a drooling, broken excuse for a living creature. Still in Kirkwall, she thinks, and tries to inhale.

The oil has burnt the inside of her nose, and she gets nothing.

So they might be near the docks, or they might still be in Hightown. For all she knows, Vallen might have actually taken her advice - bypassed legitimate channels, and sunk straight to kidnapping and privation.

Athenril’s not sure she  _likes_  that.

This isn’t, she’s certain, just a random attack.  _Random attacks_  aren’t so well prepared. A slaver wouldn’t snatch from Hightown, and a slaver wouldn’t waste so much on a single, random target. Which means either that these aren’t slavers, or that the attack isn’t random. She’d wager the latter. She has enemies, the guard only one among the rest, and many of the others would stoop far lower more readily.

She tries to contort herself, back arching, to reach the rope that binds her ankle.  _Not_ shackles, she thinks with some measure of relief. There’s slack between her ankles, too, enough to spread her feet perhaps a foot and a half apart. She’s still dressed - a good sign - and her fingers curl around the first knot.

It would be easier if she had five functioning fingers on each hand.

Her glove, she realizes, is missing - the two she’s lost to gangrene hang useless and only get in the way, the numbness in her arm beyond what the ropes have brought making it harder to focus. She tugs at the knot.

And then the door opens, metal scraping over stone, screeching and blinding as sunlight pours in. She can’t see. She can only feel a boot connect hard with her stomach, sending her onto her side coughing and retching. Hands grab her bound arms and drag her up, pulling her backwards towards the light.

It’s a chance. Every movement is a chance, and she tries to find a way to move, tests her ankles to see if she worked the knot loose enough.

She hasn’t.

 

___

It’s metal shackles by the time they board the ship, a rickety thing she’s half-convinced could sink with a firm wind. She’s hobbled and her arms rarely have sensation between the weight of the cuffs and the tight bonds of the rope still around her. Her legs are swollen and bruised and she’s coughed blood twice.

And nobody has come for her.

Hawke is long gone, in the Deep Roads trying to make a fortune. Aveline likely has no idea and no care as to where she’s gone. Bethany is innocent, hiding, dodging templars while her sibling is away. Tomwise is hiding in Darktown and was never good for rescues anyway, Elegant is likely celebrating, and the rest-

She begins to regret not keeping her other contacts closer. They’re likely celebrating now, if only because her chunk of the Kirkwall loaf is up for grabs again.

The hold, where she’s been shoved and chained, is a miserable, fetid place, and Athenril remembers exactly why she hates ships. The rocking of it turns her stomach, and without fresh air or light, she’s disoriented. She vomits twice before they bring her any water or food, and all she can learn from her surroundings is that it’s slavers. She’s alone, though - she can hear crying from another room, but hers is terribly silent.

They know who she is, and they’re keeping her isolated. She bangs her head back against the dividing wall and tries to think.

There’s no hope as long as she’s in bonds; if the ship goes down, she’ll go down with it, and if she tries to fight, she’ll be incapacitated in a moment. She’s been lucky so far - her hobbled ankles haven’t been forced apart and the crew keeps their distance. But bite and snarl and fight, and that might all go very differently.

Her only hope, then, is to wait until they reach port. Rescue won’t come, but if she can work herself free enough, and if they dock not too far out, she can get into the city warren and disappear, and eventually break whatever chains remain and return to Kirkwall - or find a new base.

She curls her fingers and tries to find the edge of the rope.

 

___

In the end, it’s luck.

She’s a proud woman, but she’s not so proud to be angry when the ship runs aground. She’s not so proud that she’s  _angry_  when it’s Ostwick guard who crash into the hold, torches held high. She’s only proud enough that she grins for just a moment before she grimaces and tries to take the pressure off of her arms, futile but necessary with how she can feel rot setting in beneath the coils.

And then she gives in, allowing rough, perfunctory hands to drag her up and cut her free.

She half-expects Hawke to be there, or even Aveline, but it’s only guards from the place she once called home. That means they’ve gone east. Tevinter-bound, or Antiva - the sheer number of elves she sees walked out onto the shore point to the former. She’s dumped on the beach with all the rest. It’s not a satisfying end to a story, she thinks, but the stinging sea air on her raw and oozing skin is its own kind of glory. She’s alive. She's alive and, somehow, the guard miss or don't care about the blue bands on her arms, the marks she was known by before she left. They don't arrest her.

They just leave her.

They’ve broken a slaver ship, but the slaves they leave outside the city walls, hungry and dying on the sand and rock. The tide is coming in, and Athenril staggers to her feet. She helps as best she can to carry the others to where the tide will stop. And then she moves to the sea and dives into it, teeth grinding with the burning of her flesh and heart pounding because she’s always been shit at swimming, at least in tides.

She pulls herself out again, soaked and bedraggled, and then she looks west.

 

___

It takes her two weeks to get back to Kirkwall.

She almost turns back several times, when she wonders just why she wants to go back to the city of chains and stairs and  _shit_ , but the answer is always the same.  _Find out who did this._ And then there’s the secondary echoes, the whispers of,  _make sure Bethany is okay_  even if she hasn’t spoken to the girl in months, or  _see Hawke come back handsomely rich_ , even if she doubts the expedition will turn up anything at all. Much as she’s hesitant to admit it, she has a home back in Kirkwall. It’s not where she sleeps, which changes month to month and always mocks her with a veneer of stability. It’s not who she sits with for meals, because half of them would stab her in the back.

But she thinks about First Day, and about how her arm was saved (though now it’s pocked with new wounds, both of them are, and her bandages are shoddy and she’s working on sheer determination), and her feet keep taking her west, or into the backs of wagons that will take her a little of the way for free (and more of the way if she offers something up, but she has little to offer).

She enters through the east gate. It’s Aveline’s guards there, but she slips through mostly unnoticed in the day’s market traffic. The stench of Kirkwall blankets her like something familiar and grating, and she sinks into it. Her first stop is Elegant’s, because Hawke took that blasted charity healer along into the Deep Roads. Elegant puts on a show of care but is rougher than she needs to be as she cuts back the damaged, infected skin and smoothes it with the poultices and the bandages, and the bargain they strike is a heavy one. But Athenril will once more somehow keep her arms and hands. She can only hope for the fingers.

The second is to Tomwise. He knows exactly who bought that admixture, and he tells her, too, with an apology - times are growing harder, after all, and Darktown is never nice. He gives her a gift of a box of special work, as well as an apology, and she takes both.

The third is to a safehome that she finds taken over.

The fourth is to one that isn’t.

The  _fifth_  is to Gamlen’s house, to see if Hawke has returned after all, and if Bethany is playing with that lug of a dog. She finds it empty save for Gamlen.

“They finally get fed up and leave?” she asks, leaning in the door. Gamlen glares at her and she half-expects him to throw the chunk of molding cheese he’s nibbling at. He doesn’t, to his credit. Perhaps his has civilized him.

“They’re both up in blighted Hightown,” he grunts.

Athenril finds herself smiling - and then the smile seizes. “Both. Not all three? Did Hawke-“

“Came back bloody fucking rich,” Gamlen slurs, and she notes the whiskey bottle.

Empty.

Athenril feels her heart sinking and she looks for distractions - the warping of the floor boards, the places where the dog chewed at door frames, the way the dust and grime dances in the thin light. “And Bethany?”

“Turned herself in to the templars.”

The light makes patterns that she wouldn’t call lovely, but they are fascinating, at least with how her ears begin to ring. Two, three weeks gone, and Bethany-  _the templars_.

“Turned herself in,” she repeats, mildly.

“Brought one by and got all suited up in a regulation robe and left, while her mother begged her not to.”

“Hawke didn’t stop it?”

“Was too late.” Gamlen shrugs. “But she turned herself in. Good riddance.” He waves a hand, but Athenril catches the tremor. She grimaces.

She retreats back out into the sun.

There is no greater horror than to be in chains. She knows it first hand, and she knows Bethany had rightly learned to feel it. And yet when the moment came, somehow Bethany went right when she should have gone left, gave up when she should have run.

That’s every inch the Bethany she knows, and Athenril curses her name.

She doesn’t deal in flesh, not with slavers and not with templars, but some people- some people just don’t understand the worth of it. Money is nothing,  _security_  is nothing, without the slip of a leash, the rending of a collar. Bethany didn’t learn that.

Athenril refuses to forget.


	10. J is for Jeweler

She's standing idle in Lowtown, at a long table laden with trinkets, all the petty ones that the woman who runs the stall won't mind nicked or stolen, if it should happen. They're all worthless - pretty baubles, but ones made of false stone or poor-quality glass, ones that will shatter easily or lose their luster within a year.   
  
The owner is chatting with a customer, all flourish and grace, and Athenril thumbs the latch on the small, finely carved wooden box she's brought her. Inside are the real thing - glass orbs with real lyrium inside (the only lyrium she'll trade in), pearls from Rialto Bay, gold and precious stone. Rialda won't be able to afford them all, not immediately, and Athenril will have more quiet stops to make throughout the next week. But the shipment is good and, failing her usual merchants and fences, there are always the more adventurous nobles.   
  
She thumbs at her lip lazily with her leather-gloved hand (newly made, not as nice as the last), and scans the table.   
  
It's been a month since she returned to Kirkwall. Things continue on. Hawke is up in Hightown, negotiating the return of the family mansion. Aveline remains captain of the guard. There is new wealth in the city, courtesy of Varric Tethras, and she's edging around the borders of it, dipping in when she can.   
  
She's begun to save up for more than protection and gear and the knowledge that she is, in her own way, rich - rich in gold and in favors and in bodies. Now she sets aside coin and trinkets not to have them set aside, but because, one day, she wants out of this city. She wants away from miserable Ostwick, too. There aren't many places ready to welcome a smuggler, let alone an elf, but she's begun having more and more dreams of settling down. Of being done.   
  
Though what she would do with herself then, she's uncertain.   
  
The proprietor's chatter is endless, and Athenril only comes back to herself when she glimpses the tines of a hair comb, a fall of lovely beads. They're iridescent blue and green and purple, peacock-colored.   
  
And they're familiar.   
  
She frowns and leans closer, reaching out to pluck it from the mass. The beads, she knows, are Nevarran. The comb is worth at least five sovereigns. It doesn't belong.   
  
It belongs in the curling, dark hair of a woman she's never going to see again, who is foolish and lost. Her fingers fold tight around it except for her immobilized two, left loose by Bethany's magic. Her lips and jaw go tense.   
  
She is not a particularly sentimental person, but this comb was a gift, one of the few she has ever given.   
  
It's up her sleeve in another breath, the box braced on her hip, and she retreats before the merchant glances to her again. She has other customers.   
  
And before that, she has a visit to make.

  


___

 

"Gamlen Amell," she says, intoxicating smoke of the Blooming Rose's main room curling around her. She keeps her tone light, her usual drawl, but she can see him tense.  
  
"What d'you want?" he mutters, not sparing her a glance.  
  
She slides up to the bar beside him and sets down Bethany's hair comb.  
  
He drains his cup. "What?"  
  
"Would you look at that - your memory's starting to go along with your hair and your dick," Athenril says with a shrug. "Either that or your eyes. How'd this get on Rialda's table?"  
  
"Huh? How should I know. Probably stole it, or bought it from you."  
  
She hums softly, leaning back a little. The fingers of her left hand drum on the polished wood. "Not from me. How much would you say it's worth?"  
  
"Two silver," he replies, quickly enough that she knows he's quoting the merchant's payment. Her blood runs hot, then cold, and she regards him silently.  
  
And then she reaches out and grabs the collar of his shirt, dragging him close.  
  
"That belonged to your niece," Athenril purred low into his ear. "It was a gift. From me. And not only was it a gift, it was a rather  _expensive_ one. She's gone now, no thanks to you, and I will be honest with you - that you sold it, and at such a _loss_ , no less, disgusts me."  
  
She lets go, pushing him aside.  
  
"Not that you ever don't disgust me."  
  
"It's worth something?" Gamlen asks, and her heel catches the bar of the stool he's sitting on, tugging it sharply towards her and sending him tumbling to the floor. She grabs up the comb again and stands, stepping over him.  
  
"Yeah," she said. "But you wouldn't have any idea, would you."

 

___

 

That night she sits on one of the walls overlooking the harbor, comb in hand, thumb rubbing over the beads and turning them on the wires that hold them in place. It's a soothing sort of motion, endless fiddling on round, quality glass. She wonders if Bethany's thumbs ever worked these paths.  
  
The Gallows are illuminated even from this distance, endless torches. She fancies she can make out the movements of templars, or glimpse the shadow of a mage in a far-off window. It's a prison, a blighted prison, no better than the slave quarters in Minrathous. And yet Bethany walked to it, took those stairs instead of being dragged.  
  
And she left behind a comb.  
  
What else did she leave behind? Athenril isn't sure she wants to know, isn't sure she wants to see Bethany's life scattered in pieces, reduced to a copper here, a copper there. The girl, for all her foolishness, her naivete, doesn't deserve that. Athenril doesn't want to see that.  
  
" _All things in this world are finite; what one man loses, another has gained_ , " she mutters to herself. The words are twisted, but she's forgotten the original with the passing of time and reality.  
  
Bethany would know the right of it.


	11. K is for Kith

“Good work.”

The oddest thing about working with children is that they’ll beam at the slightest positive comment. The girl in front of her, Fereldan with plaited dark hair and features that Athenril has heard called  _Avvar_  before, is fighting down a grin, fidgeting where she stands. Athenril can’t help her own small, answering smirk, as she closes the pouch of contraband Tevinter goods and smuggled opium. Nothing’s even missing, as far as she can tell.

The girl has promise.

She’s clever and quick and listens well but not  _too_  well. She’s also just shy of ten. There’s still time to raise her up right, make sure she knows the ins and outs and how to keep herself safe. Athenril has never been the maternal type, but sometimes-

“You. We need to talk.”

Ah. The ginger brute.

The girl -  _Hilgrud_ , Athenril reminds herself - stares up at the very tall guard captain, daring to show her face in full regalia in this part of town, without backup. With a motion of Athenril’s hand, the girl darts behind her. Athenril divides a part of her attention to watch her pockets.

“You’ve gotten pretty ballsy, haven’t you,” Athenril said, not a question but enough to pluck at Aveline’s nerves. “I’m working.”

“I thought Hawke would have made it clear to you the other month - no children.”

There’s a touch at her hip and for a moment Athenril thinks the girl is filching, but then tiny arms wind around her leg. She tries not to kick the girl off.

“You came all this way in all your pretty armor just to tell me that? Priorities,  _guard captain_.” She knows ears are pricking at that. “I’m doing nothing illegal by giving a few children a chance at enough coin to live comfortably.”

“Nothing illegal. As if that would even make a difference to you,” Aveline snorts. “It’s unconscionable.”

“And murder isn’t? Theft isn’t?”

Hilgrud whimpers.

Aveline shifts uncomfortably, arms crossing over her chest in a rattle and scrape of metal. “None of it is. But I can’t ignore  _everything_.”

“And would you rather this girl be out on the streets by herself? Or perhaps you think some slavers or pettier brothels should be teaching her a trade?” Athenril drawls, though there’s anger boiling behind her words. “Or maybe she should just beg, and hope a kind man takes pity on a little foreign girl? Let’s be honest here. Realistic. Tell me, what would you have her do?”

“Send her to the chantry. They take orphans, Athenril, for this  _exact_  reason. Getting them off the streets, somewhere better-“

“They don’t always have the room,” Athenril says, cutting her off. “Especially not for grubby foreign children with no money to back them up, no rich relatives coming to retrieve them someday. She’s lucky enough that she’s not an elf, you know. But ten years old… that’s a little old to tug at their need to be  _charitable_.” She shrugs. “Besides, I’m sure that’s the first place a good girl like Hilgrud went.”

There’s a quiet sound of assent from behind her.

“So. Another option, then, guard captain?”

She thinks she can hear Aveline’s teeth grinding, and experimentally she reaches behind herself to stroke the girl’s hair. “I’m waiting. Hilgrud’s waiting. Or maybe you’re realizing that you just don’t understand. What do you think, Hilgrud?”

Hilgrud looks up at her with wide, frightened eyes, and Athenril makes a note that there’s still some hardening left to do yet.

“Make her go away,” Hilgrud says at last.

Aveline looks away sharply.

Prying Hilgrud’s hands away from her leg gently, Athenril walks up close, close enough to rest a hand on Aveline’s breastplate. The woman flinches but doesn’t retreat, and so Athenril rises up on her toes and leans in close.

“I take care of my own, and you know that. The girl is as safe as any other place she could find here, probably safer. Back off.”

She settles her weight back on her heels. “Will that be all, guard captain?”

“Yes,” Aveline says, stiffly.

Athenril expects another threat, another roaring snarling snap to try and make her retreat, but she gains nothing more than Aveline’s back and her retreating, harsh steps. Biting down a sigh and shaking her head, Athenril turns back to Hilgrud. She reaches for her pocket. “So. Let’s see. For that work- five silver?”

Hilgrud pouts - and holds out the sovereign she’d plucked from Athenril’s hip belt.

Athenril laughs. “Oh,” she says. “I  _like_  you.”


	12. L is for Labdanum

Hilgrud is running the first watch line as Athenril bends over the crate, Orlesian Port Authority-stamped and filled to the brim with exotic and expensive perfumes dutifully liberated from its intended warehouse. She’s kept the girl close ever since their run-in two weeks before with the ginger brute, and the girl is an even faster study with direction. She’s also honest - with Athenril, at any rate - and that counts for more than Athenril is readily willing to admit.

She’s also  _quiet_ , and Athenril only notices her a few seconds before she feels the small fingers tug at her leggings, clever little hands dexterous enough to gain purchase on the fitted leather.

Athenril scowls and bats at her even as she straightens.

“What?”

“She’s back,” Hilgrud breathes, something like a stage whisper, and Athenril looks beyond her.

And there’s Aveline.

 _This_  time, however, Aveline is not wearing the armor of the guard. This time she has donned her old togs, rough tunic and rough studded leather, muscles arms bared and broad shoulders allowed to speak for themselves. Athenril eyes her warily, watches as the freckled beast hesitates- and then bows her head in greeting.

Athenril sighs. “Get over here.”

Hilgrud dashes behind the crate before Aveline is close enough that Athenril can read her unease in more than gross body language, mark the furrow lines in the middle of her brow, the tension in the set of her jaw. Aveline has always been easy to read, even if Athenril only knows the broad strokes of her: Fereldan, soldier, once married to a templar. Idealistic. Naive.

Determined.

“Here to arrest me in plainclothes?” Athenril asks, lightly.

“No,” Aveline says, and glances to the crate. “… Here to assist with lifting, actually. If you like.”

Athenril barks a startled laugh. “What, help? Are you out of your mind,  _guard captain_? If your enemies see you here-“

“Then I crush their face in. Do you have any other objections, beyond your obvious concern for my wellbeing?”

“ _Why_?”

The question hangs between them a moment, tense and heavy, and it’s Aveline who looks away. “Because I would have impounded these myself if you hadn’t gotten to them first. I’m not a big fan of them ever reaching their intended recipient.”

Athenril lifts a questioning brow, otherwise fighting to stay passive. “An enemy of yours not deserving their perfumes?”

“There’s poisons in there to,” Aveline says. “Or at least, there should be.”

She has always been good at not letting surprise show. It’s a weakness, as is her frustration at something slipping by her. “Good to know,” is all she says. “Well then- Higrud, you go back and run fence. And you, temporary help- put your back into it.”

___

They end the night in a tavern that’s not the Hanged Man. Athenril is welcome on Tethras floorboards, and Aveline certainly is, but Athenril prefers the familiar and the private. The Golden Asp, with its gaudy Nevarran decorations, isn’t either in generalities, but she knows the right corner to tuck into.

They have Nevarran wines, too, and food that never crawls with weevils, and that’s worth something.

It’s just her and Aveline. Hilgrud is tucked into a safe house - not one of Athenril’s own, but one that she’s certain is just as safe - and Athenril doesn’t linger with the rest of her team after a successful job. They all go their separate ways. But Aveline has hung on, following Athenril for just an evening the way Athenril presumes she follows Hawke.

Now she’s frowning at the wine.

“They serve piss whiskey, if you need it,” Athenril says, leaning back in the carved wooden booth filled with stained, musty pillows.

“I’m fine,” Aveline says. Earlier today, Athenril would have called it  _grousing_ , but she can see the effort the other woman is putting in to it all. She was a damn good set of hands today, but she doesn’t actually want to be here.

Athenril blinks with feigned laziness, sipping at her wine. “Why haven’t you hightailed it home?”

“None of your business, thief,” Aveline says, and tries to cover it with a pull of wine. Athenril frowns, and Aveline at least seems to also recognize that the motion is- exceedingly odd. Perhaps it’s the Orlesian in her, rearing its head at last.

“Do you even know why?”

She catches the ripple of tension in Aveline’s arms, and waits for the woman to slam down her glass and stand. But she catches herself before she gives in to the impulse. She sets her glass down with exceeding care and then sits back, arms crossed over her chest.

“I told you. You did a job that would’ve taken me too much paperwork. So I’m buying you a round, and then I’m going.”

“Oh, you’re buying? Shame. I would’ve ordered something more expensive.”

Aveline fixes her with a warning gaze.

Athenril answers with a smile. “So does this mean we’re finally on full working terms?”

“Something like that.” Aveline is clearly itching to play with the cup to something more substantial. Golden Asp glassware isn’t particularly finely made or delicate - there are endless distortions and impurities in the glass, they’re chipped and ground smooth in places, and the rims are far thicker than the Nevarrans, at least, insist on. But they’re also not metal or wood cups that can be slammed or rolled, at least by people who are used to metal or wood.

“Good to hear. A fine day’s work, if you ask me.”

“It’s not every day,” Aveline mutters, “that you find a thief who’s the best at stealing from the rich and redistributing it all.”

Athenril laughs. “Sure it is.”

Her companion looks up sharply.

“Who else am I going to take from?” she asks with an easy smirk. “The poor have nothing I want. The rich have it all, or the connections to put me in its path.”

“And redistributing?”

“Honest pay for-“

Aveline’s warning look is back.

“For decent work,” Athenril finishes, smoothly. “Stealing livelihood is a noble’s job.”

Aveline regards her a moment, then nods.

“You didn’t pick all that up when you worked for me?” Athenril presses, drawing a leg up onto the bench with her.

“Wasn’t interested.”

“Of course not.”

Athenril considers her glove a moment. It’s not as fine as the first iteration, and she’s still trying to get the braced curl of her last two fingers just right, but there’s tooling in the leather that can keep her attention, if she needs her attention kept. She considers. And then she reaches to one of the discreet pouches at her hip and draws out a small vial, placing it on the table between them.

“Poison?” Aveline asks, frowning.

“Perfume,” Athenril replies. “Fine stuff. Take it in addition to the coin you refused from me.”

Aveline snorts, but she reaches out for the glass all the same.

“And what am I supposed to do with perfume?”

Athenril shrugs. “Not my business.”

She watches as Aveline uncaps the vial, bringing it close enough to sniff experimentally. She keeps it at a safe enough distance that were it something noxious (and it’s not), she would only feel a slight lightheadedness. She’s got a decent, if a bit thick, head on her shoulders, and she’s learning.

“Well?” Athenril asks as Aveline caps it again and sets it down, closer to her edge of the table.

“Marigolds,” Aveline says. “I like it.”


	13. M is for Miscarriage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for violence directed at a pregnant woman, traumatic miscarriage, and character insensitivity towards some aspects.

Athenril's fingers dig into the woman's upper arm as she pounds a fist against the finely carved door of the estate. It's the dead of night, moon obscured by endless clouds. Wind howls through Hightown, shutters banging and creaking, gardens loosing not only delicate scents but also the uneasy sounds of trees and brushes in a blank stone city. The sea and sky are uneasy, and rumors say that the qunari are as well.

It's a shit time to be out, even for women like the two of them who are well-versed in walking in shadows and using the screaming of the heavens to hide their movements.

The door finally swings open, and it's not a servant who looks out, or the owner of the manse, but a woman with curling blonde hair, a fine evening robe thrown over what looks to be nothing at all, and a scowl.

"What in the Void do you think you're doing here, Athenril?" Elegant snaps.

"No time. You  _do_  keep your damn herbals at home, don't you? At least some of them?" The knees of the woman beside her begin to buckle again, and Athenril swears, tightening her grip. "Come on, Lana.  _Up_ ."

Lana groans and tries, but with the amount of blood she's losing-

"What do you need?"

"Please, messere-" Lana says, reaching out a shaking and blood-streaked hand.

Elegant's gaze goes hard and flat, and then she steps aside. "In. Third room on the right. Be quiet about it."

 

* * *

They get Lana settled on the floor by the fire, in a nest of old blankets that Elegant says she doesn't care about. Athenril knows the twitch of the left side of her mouth, though, and so she convinces Lana to keep her hips off of the mass of it.

The stench of blood and worse fills the room once the door is closed, the heat of the fire making it all the more pungent. But the warmth seems to be helping, as much as knowing that she's somewhere safe. Lana presses her cheek to the coarse blanket, focus wholly on her breathing.

Athenril watches, unsure of what to do.

The miscarriage is her fault, ultimately. Lana used to run with her. She was amazing with locks and even better with distractions, and she always had that edge of kindness that Athenril doesn't quite trust but can see the value in. Now she's bleeding out, five months in to the pregnancy that made her leave Athenril's side, and Lana can't articulate what happened beyond  _attacked_. Athenril doesn't know if it was poison or a boot to the stomach, or whether it was Kirkwall taking its dues. But it traces back to her, one way or another. Athenril didn't protect her, but she did put her in the path of enemies.

Though why they would do this, she has no idea.

She's not a gentle person, not caring enough to take Lana's pale and clawed hand, and she's no good with the finer arts of healing. If she helped Elegant mix tinctures and salves, she would likely turn them to poison.

"Boss?" Lana murmurs, and Athenril's lips twitch into a grim mockery of a smile. She rocks forward on her haunches.

"Yeah?"

"Was going to name it after you, if it was a girl."

Her heart goes still and her skin goes cold, and though Lana reaches out for her, all Athenril can do is stay upright.

"Oh," she says.

Lana ran with her for a little over a year. She has met Hawke, and Bethany, and Aveline, and she was willing to work with Athenril even when she lost fingers, even when she dragged herself back home from Ostwick. But that sort of loyalty is where things end. A little human girl named  _Athenril_ -

"It's a shit name," she says.

Lana shakes her head.

Athenril swears and forces herself to her feet. Outside this room it will be a little cooler. Outside the estate, cooler still. Elegant doesn't need her help, and Lana doesn't need to see her confusion.

She leaves.

 

* * *

"The blonde woman is staring at you," Hilgrud says, taking the candied fruit that Athenril holds out to her. She tries not to think about it,  _giving treats_ , and instead follows Hilgrud's gaze.

It's Elegant, of course, at the table she still keeps in Lowtown even though she is a lady now, with an estate and a reputation to guard.

"So she is," Athenril says, glancing back down to the Fereldan girl. She's close to her eleventh nameday now, if she's not lying, and it's not the first time that the idea gives her pause. Another few years and she'll grow taller, fill out, and then will she be in Lana's position?

Athenril presses a copper into the girl's sticky hands and leaves her there. She can take care of herself.

"I can't believe," Elegant says once Athenril's in earshot of a lowered voice, "that you didn't come back. You miserable excuse for a-"

"Save it," Athenril snaps. "Is she-"

"She's alive, yes. The child has been lost, of course."

Athenril nods and turns, stopping only when Elegant clears her throat. She grits her teeth. "Yes?"

"That will be a sovereign, Athenril."

"What? She can't pay?"

"I don't know, but I do know that you can. You came to my house, in the middle of the night, and would you like to know how I had to explain that to my husband?"

"The same way, I suppose, that you explain prancing about Lowtown in your finery to sell powdered herbs," Athenril says, looking over her shoulder. "I'm not paying you a Maker-damned  _sovereign_ , Elegant. You owe me enough that it's not a sovereign."

"Seventy silver, then. I just thought a sovereign might be easier for you to manage. Less counting."

Athenril glares.

But then she thinks of Lana, tracking  _her_  down even while she was bleeding, dying, and she thinks of how Lana reached out for her, and she sighs, unhooking her main coin purse. She draws out a sovereign and tosses it onto Elegant's table, amidst the dried bundles of embrium and elfroot. It clinks as it rolls into one of the ceramic mixing bowls. "There. Keep your sovereign."

"A pleasure," Elegant says, and she pockets the coin with a fox's smile. "As always, Athenril."

Athenril snorts and looks back out to Lowtown, with its banners and the building projects that will likely go nowhere. The air smells like dirt and pig and foundry smoke. The sky has calmed for a day, and the sun beats down overbright and harsh. She takes a deep breath.

And then she asks, "The child?"

"Would have been a boy," Elegant says, lightly, as if they talk only of the weather.

Athenril doesn't look back.

"Good."


	14. N is for Nobility

Hawke is here.

Of course Hawke is here, amongst all the nobles in their finery, all the Orlesian silks and Antivan-cut trousers and dresses, all the perfumes from Nevarra and Seheron, all the wretched ham from the Anderfels. It's a grand party, by Kirkwall standards, and she should have counted on Hawke.

Perhaps she's losing her touch.

It's another thing to worry about, as if she wasn't out of her element already. She has  _people_  she sends on these sorts of jobs, people who blend in with Marcher high society when there are goods to be picked up on the sly under cover of the bustle of a social event. People who don't have to hide their ears. People who don't have to pretend their servants.

Elegant ran one once, before their difference shoved them apart, connected by only the thinnest strand of coin and respect. Lana had, a few time times. If Bethany had stayed on longer-

She swallows and tries not to think of a jeweled Nevarran comb, or how there are several in this room far too much like it for her comfort.

The plan, such as it is, is easy enough - curtsy and say  _messere_  enough times to get her out of the main line of the party, then slip up the stairs, down the hall, take a left, and if the stairs are watched, go out the balcony and climb up to the top floor that way. There's a room up there, left unlocked but guarded for somebody else, and in that room are Rivaini carved and decorated eggs. Hollow, fragile, and next to priceless for the right buyer.

She knows the right buyer.

Which means when she gets the chance, she's going to be in that room and then away from the entire property. The only hitch is Hawke. If Hawke sees her, she's no doubt in for at the least knowing looks, but more likely deliberate, curious interference, along with a little disapproval. Too much attention for a little elven kitchen servant who refuses to remove her gloves and has to wear her chemise out of style to cover the telling blue curls around her arms.

The far more boring caravan escort is far more attractive right now. Less profit but more familiarity and certainty. It's why she's rarely on those jobs now, leaving them to others, but damned if she doesn't miss them at times like this.

She settles down the platter of canapes and then retreats again, hopefully not too quickly or not too notably. She makes it halfway towards the stairs when she's stopped by a voice, and she tells herself she had thought it would take at least five to ten attempts.

But of course, it's Hawke.

"Didn't think this was your sort of event," Hawke says, easily, and when she glances up, Hawke is looking anywhere but at her.  _Could be talking to anybody_ , Athenril realizes, and that's at least a small blessing.

"Messere," is her only response, and she sees it hitch Hawke's chest with a restrained laugh (or snort, a snort is more likely).

"Should I be avoiding the food?"

She watches a moment, then slips by without a word. Hawke reaches out a hand to catch her arm, but she slips aside and the hand never reaches her. Hawke doesn't follow.

The food is fine, but now Hawke has something to keep occupied with and Athenril has a meandering but short path to the stairs. She expects footsteps behind her, but she hears only laughter and jovial conversation, names being dropped and bland jokes being tossed out to an eagerly awaiting crowd. Hawke is fitting right in to high society life.

The idea nearly makes her laugh, but she holds it in until she passes from the bustle of the ballroom and into the dim dark of a hallway not set to be used that evening.

It's much harder to hold the illusion of a skittering servant when she's out of sight, but she clamps down on her pride and her bitterness, because any alcove might hold party guests in the throes of passion or the whispers of conspiracy. She keeps her head bowed just slightly and walks with her hands clasped before her, fingers hooked together as if she is the image of a little girl (because she knows no little girls who move like this). It's a testament to her will and her spirit, she decides, that this rankles so much and is so hard to keep on up the stairs and down the hall until she takes a left. Others seem to give up and in to it so easily, and other still could never hold this mask at all. But she can do it. She-

Has almost walked into the guard.

Biting back a curse she ducks into one of the alcoves and finds it blessedly free of lovers, just as heavy booted footsteps pass. There's no sound of armor to alert her, and she feels foolish - of course, in a house, the guard would wear leather or padded cloth, and not steel. The city guard would likely take offense, anyway, that the owner of the house didn't trust their protection.

She waits another span of breaths and heartbeats before she ducks out once more. A guard would recognize her as out of place, and might ask inconvenient questions. Once she's passed where any lurking lovers might be, she drops her charade and instead clings to the walls, crouched and moving silent. There's a trickle of light around a corner, and she turns cautiously.

Stairs. Unoccupied stairs, moreover, and ones that go up right where she needs them to. She hadn't expected them to be bare, but it gives her a straight shot up and only the prospect of an unruly guard at the door to her target. She's prepared for that, though, and she edges up the steps, slipping her shoes off at the first landing and letting her calloused toes carry her silently up.

Down the hall, take a left- she hears a cough and a shifting of cloth. She takes just a moment to check for another watching guard - or worse, a curious Hawke trailing behind her - and then slips a weighted ball from the sash around her hips. Peering around the corner, she can make out the door and the man. He's tall but not particularly broad, more bean pole than oak, and she tests the weight of her trinket.

Just a little gift from Tomwise - the man should be honored to be treated to something that, if it had been made in a place with a little more sun and by a man with rounded ears, might be considered a form of art.

It has to bounce to set off, and she stills her breath before she throws. It arcs, silent and too small to notice in the flickering torchlight, until it hits the rug-covered floor a few feet beyond her target. He turns to it, curses, moves- and then sways on his feet as the invisible gas the bomb spews wraps around his throat and fills his lungs. She sucks in a chest full of clean air, then darts forward and catches him as he stumbles and sinks back.

He makes no sound when she stretches him out on his back, breath burning in her lungs.

There's another part, a second bomb she could let loose to see just where the fog is, but she foregoes it in favor of testing the door. Unlocked, as it should be. A quick motion and she's within, the door between her and a spinning head and dreamless sleep.

The room is silent and lit by a full moon that somehow shines brightly enough through the ever-present foundry haze above the city to cast stark shadows across the floor. The carpet is plush. The only traps are easily caught and disarmed, a moment's work for a less-skilled thief, and the room is made for exhibition, not concealment. A smarter man might have placed the box in an out of the way corner, might have stacked papers on top of it to disguise its worth. A smarter man might have locked it away. A smarter man might not have displayed it prominentally on a round table in the center of the room.

She double-checks for traps, because this feels far too easy.

There are none.

She approaches slowly. No trip lines or trigger plates move with her. She reaches the table and settles her hands on the fine wood of the box.

It could, she thinks for just a moment, hold something else. It could be magicked. What she wouldn't give for a little Fereldan mage girl right now-

But it's not, and it's the right size for what she knows is inside of it.

Her thumb catches the latch. She eases it open, holding her breath until the hinge is spread with no squeal to give her away to the uncaring walls.

Inside is velvet-lined, not designed to set off the delicate works of art but instead for opulence and for cushioning. The eggs themselves are paper-thin in places, built up by gilding in others. One is patterned in diamonds, another in swirls, and still another has a pastoral scene that has never existed in life painted on its surface, all verdure and bright sun, with none of the sweat, the ox shit, the famine.

But there, behind the small chest, is a little statue of curving white- bone? Horn? Athenril slowly lowers the lid on her prize and reaches out, tapping a finger against the top of the figure's head. She can't feel the material through her gloves, but she can lean in and get a closer look in the dim light.

Hand-carved.

The aesthetic is strange. It isn't Tevinter or Nevarran or even Anders. It reminds her of nothing she has ever seen. And that is how she places it. She has never dealt in Dalish artifacts or goods.

She never thought there would be a buyer.

On an impulse, her fingers close around the figure and she tucks it, small as it is, into the apron of her dress. Then she turns back to the eggs. She has at most an hour or two, at least a few seconds, to get out before her host's potential buyer comes to see them. She's worked harder jobs.

And she knows that she can find another, better buyer in two weeks' time. Her host doesn't need the tidy sum she'll pocket anyway. And besides - maybe a little scandal is just what this mansion needs.

Just so long as her name isn't anywhere near it until the gold is in her hands.

 

* * *

 

Hawke's Dalish (Merrill, she had supplied when Athenril turned up on her doorstep) turns the carved figure over in her hands, looking like a creature of the dark damp with her wide eyes and flicking gaze. "This... do you know who this is?"

She lifts her gaze and Athenril shifts uncomfortably.

 _This_  slight and nervous thing is the remaining gasp of the nobility of her ancestors? She supposes even human nobles are... peculiar at best. Perhaps she should have expected this: a rickety house in the Alienage, bigger than a single woman warrants but untouched undoubtedly because of Hawke's hands, or Varric's. There's dust on half the surfaces, and Maker knows what on the rest, and the fire that burns in the hearth burns unnaturally. The woman - or girl, really - just looks small and lost in it all, without even the quickness of a gutter rat.

Athenril rubs at her tattoo while her eyes trace the lines along the other woman's face.

"No," she says. "I just thought it might be Dalish."

"Oh, yes. Yes, it is. Well, Elvhen, at least. It's very old, or more old than most of what I've seen like it."

"Yeah?" She wonders if that means gold will trade hands instead of copper, then wonders with a look around if anything will trade hands, and if anything does, if it will be mouse bones.

"Halla horn, carved into the figure of Mythal." The name means nothing to Athenril, but Merrill doesn't seem to mark it and presses forward. Athenril focuses on the rise and fall of her accent instead. "Oh, it is lovely. Where did you find it?"

"Ask Hawke," she says with a shrug. "We were at the same party."

"Oh, a party? Was it here in Kirkwall?"

Athenril nods.

"There are a surprising number of Dalish artifacts in this city, did you know? I wouldn't have, except I tend to wander, and then I find myself looking on- well. You don't need to know that, I suppose." Merrill turns the carving over again, then holds it out to her.

"No," Athenril says. "Keep it."

Merrill's eyes seem to widen still further. "Really?"

"Yeah. Go for it. You have more use for it than I do." It's not like she has shelves to display the thing on.

"I suppose I need to find some coin, then. Hold on..."

Athenril watches as she slips into the side room, leans to the side and catches a glimpse of a tall, broken mirror. It's a rich object for such a poor place, even if it is in pieces, and she idly runs through how much she could get for it.

Stealing from the nobility. It's not like it's anything new.

But neither is giving gifts, though she doesn't give this one in hope of favor. There is so little possibility of finding a buyer, is all, and she doesn't object as Merrill presses a single silver into her palm.

"I doubt that's enough, but-"

"It's fine," she says. "... Keep that safe, is all."

Something in Merrill's expression goes rigid, the constant motion of her failing for just a moment. "Of course," she says. "I'm trained to do that, yes."

Athenril frowns, then shakes her head and steps away. "Right. Well, then. I'll leave you to your-" She waves a hand.

"Rats," Merrill supplies. "And a bit of dripping, I think."

"That." She inclines her head.

" _Ma serannas_ ," Merrill says with a small smile. " _Dareth shiral_."

It would be a more lovely goodbye if Athenril understood the words - but the rich and powerful have always had a way of speaking over her head when it doesn't really matter to anybody but them. She slips back into Lowtown to meet with her real buyer with a silver in her pocket and a quiet thought as to why Hawke's Dalish would be trained in keeping things safe.


	15. O is for Obscenity

She’s not responsible for the perfume and incense that curl through the air, and that’s just the way she likes it. The Blooming Rose is a prize catch for the Coterie, and when she comes by, she comes for pleasure in place of business. Coin leaves her pocket, not the other way around, and it’s the only place she’s happy to allow it.

The first check she makes is for any lurking threats. The second is for Gamlen. But the Rose is a choice establishment and tonight, at least, it’s more than welcoming.

Jethann beckons to her from where he’s draped across a plush couch, and she joins him. There’s no saunter to the sway of her hips, and when she sits, it’s on the back of the couch with one foot on the seat. His fingers go to the arch of her foot, slipping beneath the worn stirrup of her legging.

“Staying long?” he asks, his work smile in place. She can see through it enough to know that tonight has been a legitimately good night for him. Pleasant clients, then. Good tips.

He deserves it.

“Long enough to clear my head,” she says, rolling her ankle. “Get off my feet. Had a run-in with Meeran’s people today. Some noble hired them to keep me away from the caravans he pays to carry his opium.”

“And? I don’t see any new cuts on that lovely skin of yours,” Jethann says, focused wholly on her - or doing an incredible job at making it seem like it.

“I wasn’t there for the opium. Everybody walked away happy, after the shouting and the posturing.”

“Men,” Jethann huffs, and Athenril cracks a smile. He stretches out along the couch, languid and at ease. They’ve known each other for, what- four years now? and it’s a flattering sign of trust. From the both of them.

His fingers work into the ball of her foot, and her eyelids drop lower. “Is Serendipity here tonight?”

“No. She,” he says, grinning, “is with one stick-up-his-arse  _seneschal_.”

“Is she, now.” Athenril shakes her head. “She has a knack for landing the best catches. Give her some time and she’ll have Hawke in her bed, too, paying out the nose.”

“It’s what she’s best at,” he agrees with a laugh. “Well, that and her flans.”

His fingers work up her calf, the heel of his hand sliding up against taut muscle. If she lets him, he’ll have her flat on her stomach, body melting to warm putty. She won’t.

It’s not that she doesn’t have the coin, or the inclination, or the idiotic moral stance that somehow, paying for sex is  _wrong_. It’s that when she walks in the door, some of her armor is left at the threshold. She can feel his hands even now nudging under what’s left, and she pulls her leg away.

“Busy night?” she asks him, and he shakes his head, then beckons.

She gives him her other leg.

 

* * *

 

Lusine gives her an empty room for the night. It’s little more than a closet, but it’s clean and the bed is nicer than what she has in her current hole. It’s the first time in a few weeks that she gets a whole night’s sleep unbroken, armor cast aside and limbs naked against the sheets. (The locks on the door are more than acceptable, and for all the touching that goes on out on the main floor and in the other rooms,  _this_  is a place where she is untouchable.)

She wakes up to the sleepy quiet of a mid-morning at the Rose. There are patrons, to be sure, but the late night crowd have finally stumbled out, sated and only half-seeing. There are murmurs beyond the door that register as she lies staring into the pitch black of the windowless room.

She runs through the day’s duties. Hilgrud needs to be checked in on. She’ll be at the Lowtown bazaar at noon, with pocket change snagged from Hightown and, with any luck, some new rumors from down in Dark. She’ll need to go by Tomwise, too, and that night there’s the job at the harbor. Silks, this time. It’s always a different trade - little holes the Coterie doesn’t feel like patching.

What she wouldn’t give for something she could track month to month instead of day to day.

Athenril pushes herself from the bed. Perhaps in another month she’ll wander back in, she thinks as she pulls her clothing and armor back on. Perhaps in another month, she’ll let down her guard enough to soak in one of the great tubs, filled with all manner of spices and oils. But until then-

Lusine’s voice, loud and distinctly not pleased, breaks through her thoughts. She tightens the straps on her armor and finds the latch by feel alone, edging the lock open and the door slightly ajar. She closes her eyes against the sudden shaft of light and listens instead.

”- license from the Viscount’s office-“

“We’re aware. But a license to operate does not make an establishment  _good_ , madame. In Tevinter-“

Athenril slips from her room. The argument is in the main hall, and she weaves her way towards it even as her vision spots and her eyes ache. It’s dim in the Rose, but not dim enough.

“In Tevinter,” a new voice chimes in, and this time it’s Serendipity, “everything is turned on its head. We are not in Tevinter.”

“Quiet, you. We know about the seneschal.”

“Do you? Do you know the mole on his back-“

“ _Serendipity_ ,” Lusine hisses, and Athenril draws up to the doorway.

Ah- that explains it. Chantry Sisters, arrogant and proud and trying to look as disdainfully as possible at the well-appointed room, its good lighting and welcoming nature, every inch of it in order. There’s nothing to find fault with, but they’ll build up a tottering tower of outrage all the same.

“ _If_  you have a problem with how I run my establishment,” Lusine says, putting herself between Serendipity and the women in black, “then I suggest you go to the city guard and lodge a complaint.”

Athenril steps into the room. “And if,” she says, trying to sound cheerful though she thinks it comes out more threatening by the way the women stiffen, “you’re here because your templars keep coming to the door, then perhaps you’d be better off talking to  _them_.”

Lusine shoots her a warning glare. Athenril ignores it.

The lead Sister sniffs. “We didn’t come here to take lip from whores-“

“No,” Athenril says, “I’m sure you get enough of that from each other.”

Serendipity snorts and Athenril comes to stand, feet shoulder-width apart and arms crossed over her chest. The lead Sister is turning pale while the other is blushing red. Lusine is scowling and trying not to make it obvious that it’s at Athenril’s meddling.

“This  _deviance_ -” the lead Sister begins.

“There’s nothing against it in the Chant, last I checked,” Serendipity says. “And some of your boys and girls are really into saying it in bed, did you know?”

“Enough, you two,” Lusine snaps, finally, and Serendipity retreats with raised, placating hands. Athenril follows with only a small backwards glance. Behind them, Lusine’s voice drops low enough that Athenril can pretend she doesn’t hear.

“Harpies,” Serendipity grouses. “Every few years we get one or two of them.”

Athenril nods, circling around the back of the chair that Serendipity drops into. She settles her hands on the woman’s shoulders and begins to knead into the tight muscle there, returning Jethann’s favor the night before.

“And every few years they go away,” she says, and Serendipity sighs and nods.

“Eventually. But not before causing all sorts of noise, and very rarely the fun sort. Next they’ll come in during peak hours, start trying to lure customers away, or shame them.” She screws up her nose, then shakes her head. “It’s no fun at all. Can I come join your operation for a month or so? Pass the time?”

“I don’t deal in flesh,” Athenril says, glancing up as the Sisters turn to leave at last. Lusine drags herself over to the bar with all the poise she can manage - which isn’t much. Her hair isn’t set yet, her paints aren’t applied, and she looks a good ten years older than she usually does. “Besides,” Athenril says, looking back down to Serendipity, “you’d only make a quarter of what you make here, tops. I’m no seneschal.”

Serendipity snorts. “He does tip rather nicely.”

Athenril’s lips quirk, and then she gives in and leans down to kiss the crown of Serendipity’s head. The other elf preens a little from the attention. “Well-deserved. I couldn’t afford you.”

“We could come to some arrangement, darling.” She tilts her head back, brow raised in question.

Athenril shakes her head and pulls away, letting her hands drop back to her side. It’s only then that she realizes she’s forgotten her glove, that her dead fingers hang useless, and she crosses her arms to tuck them away.

“Not why I’m here,” she says, and turns back to retrieve the last of her armor.


	16. P is for Physician

“You back in town for good this time, Athenril?” Tomwise asks, trying not to look nervous behind his table full of wares. He’s getting better at it, she thinks - or maybe she’s just been away long enough that she’s lost all point of reference.

It’s only been a year and a half. Maybe closer to two.

She leans her hip against the pitted and scarred wood. “Business been hurting without me, Tomwise?”

“Of course it has.” The nervousness is falling away, replaced by a sort of weariness she knows all too well. It was what drove her out of Kirkwall for a little. That and a few unwelcome run-ins with another operation. Word is that the Coterie’s crushed them. Too ambitious.

And so she’s back.

Hilgrud (twelve and counting now, lanky and quick and well-travelled from following Athenril around Nevarra) signals from the shadowed intersection. All clear, then - she has time.

“And here I thought Hawke would be helping you make an honest living,” she says, lazily picking through the vials he has set out.”

Tomwise snorts. “ _Honest_. You know, Hawke’s butting heads with the oxmen these days. So there’s a chance of some coin there, I suppose. Not like your business, though.”

“Well, you’re in luck. I’m settling back in, if all works out. Rebuilding.”

“Good for you.” Tomwise flicks at her hand when she touches a rather exquisite piece - Mythal’s Favor, if she knows Tomwise and she knows the cast of the liquid inside.

“Expanding a bit?” she asks, snagging the neck of the bottle all the same. It’s fluted, pre-scored in the dips for easy breaking. “Didn’t know you were edging into Elegant’s territory.”

“It’s not Elegant’s territory,” he says, snatching it back and setting it down with a notable  _thump_. “She doesn’t like working with the ingredients. I don’t mind. My lungs are going to turn black and fall out from chokedamp in another five years, anyway. What do I care?”

“Martyr,” she snorts.

“Businessman.” He catches her gaze. There’s a boldness there that she had only caught glimpses of before. Has he changed so much?

Has she?

“Healer Tomwise,” she says, and he shakes his head.

“What do you need, Athenril? Are you here to actually set up a contract, put an order in? Or is this just a social call?”

She doesn’t  _make_  social calls, and she’s about to tell him just that until she realizes she has no other reason. She’s checking in. It’s been almost two years.

So she clears her throat instead and pushes off of the table, crossing her arms over her chest. “Wanted to make sure you were alive. Seeing what my options are. You know how it goes.”

“Right.” 

At the intersection, Hilgrud shifts, shoulders tensing. Athenril uncurls, ready to run. But she needs a reason to have been here, a way to guard against untoward questions about sentimentality. And she lands on one, blurting out before she can think it through,

“Have you heard anything about Bethany?”

Tomwise at first doesn’t respond, then shakes his head. He hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care about the tension sliding through her limbs and coming out into her stance. “Bethany- Hawke’s sister?” he asks. “She ended up in the Gallows, didn’t she?”

She nods, then darts her eyes back to where Hilgrud has turned towards her.  _Coterie_. Not the meeting she wants just yet. Soon, but not yet.

“Yeah. After that,” she says, turning back to Tomwise and canting her head to one side. He notes it. “Have you heard anything since?”

His reply this time is quicker. “If she owes you money, just forget about it.”

“That’s not… no. She doesn’t. I’m just- concerned.” And out of time. Flustered, frustrated, and out of time. “If you hear anything- and my usual order, with a sampler of your new stuff. I’ll be back.” Hilgrud has slipped away out of sight, getting herself somewhere safe, and it’s time for Athenril to do the same. No cloying bombs, no poison, no irons. Clean escape.

Tomwise nods. “I’ll hold it for you for two weeks,” he says.

“Got it.”

And she’s gone.


	17. Q is for Quay

The harbor leaps and trembles with another blast, waves crashing against the piers and embankments in fire-reflecting arcs. The stone and wood is slick with blood and oil, and above the sky is filled with soot and ash.

Kirkwall is in flames, and Athenril keeps low.

Tomwise has Hilgrud down in Darktown; the qunari haven’t been sighted there, not yet, and it’s the safest place she can think of when the city gates are being mobbed by half the city. They were shut half an hour ago, she knows- oxmen man the winches, and none are being sparred. It’s a massacre the likes of which she’s never seen, and she does her best to stay apart from it.

But there is work to be done, even now, and she’s never felt safe sitting in one place while fires rage. So she prowls along the docks that the qunari have already left behind, marking ships and cargo that will be easily liberated in the silence once the fighting is over. She can only hope that somehow these northern beasts are driven out, or else she’ll have no one to sell to.

There’s a shout out on the water, and she ducks behind a stack of crates, crouched with one foot braced on coiled rope. The texture of it keeps her grounded, and she listens beyond the distant explosions, the screaming, the crackling of fire and the crashing of buildings as the fires gut them. The shouting is human, and it comes closer, closer- and then she hears the thud of booted feet landing on the quay, hears the patter of falling rope.

A boat? A small one, from how it doesn’t groan in the shifting waves. She straightens just enough to peer over the top of her makeshift wall.

Robes and armor.

 _Mages and templars_.

There are other boats on the water, smaller than the ferries that usually run but with higher walls, less likely to capsize. Somewhere in them is the Knight-Commander, without a doubt. And in the one that’s landed already, stepping out onto the quay on wobbling legs but with a familiar hard set of determination to her mouth-

 _Bethany Hawke_.

The only thing that Tomwise was able to turn up about her was that she was still alive, but that doesn’t begin to encompass it. It’s been three years, and she’s lost only a little of the youthful roundness of her face. What  _has_  changed is the light in her eyes, the way she squares her shoulders, the way she waits for orders. There’s a confidence there that Athenril doesn’t remember. A certitude.

Athenril swallows thickly.  _Bethany Hawke_ , with no sibling there to protect her, on her own against the oxmen ravaging the city.

Suddenly, Athenril cares a great deal about the fighting.

There’s a jeweled hair comb that she keeps wherever she makes her home, and memories of sitting on the Lowtown walls staring out at the Gallows, cursing this girl’s name and wondering why she would give so much up. There’s a weight to the fall of her hair, the way she looks down for a moment. Athenril forgets about marking potential future jobs. She looks instead at the movement of templars, of other mages, and in the chaos of the landing of the Knight-Commander, she steals forward. Bethany is close enough, on the outskirts, and Athenril’s fingers close around her wrist with only a tiny warning tap. Her touch is light. She tugs backwards.

She expects a scream, but all Bethany does is look quickly over her shoulder, then allow herself to be led.

Either she remembers Athenril’s touch very well, or the Gallows requires flexibility, secrecy, and a level of self-control Athenril only knows from life in the shadows. It’s likely the latter.

Once they’re back behind the wall of crates, Bethany hunched down so that the top of her head isn’t visible, Athenril quirks a thin smile. Bethany just looks at her searchingly, and Athenril feels the first tugging tendrils of regret. This isn’t her. This is as awkward as her playing hostess on First Day, and-

“They’re going to realize I’m gone in maybe five minutes at the most,” Bethany warns, and Athenril nods.

“I know. I just-“

“Is something wrong? Is-“

“Hawke’s fine. As far as I know.” Athenril rises up on her toes to glance over the crates. Now that she has Bethany here, she’s not entirely sure what to do with the lancing panic that threatens to shake apart her spine. “I wanted to- be careful, Bethany.”

Bethany just stares, all wide amber eyes, and Athenril swallows.

“The city’s going to shit. Don’t die. You owe me better than death.”

Bethany licks at her lips, gone bloodless and pale from tension. “I don’t owe you anything,” she says, but it’s not an objection, just a weak protest at something she doesn’t understand. “I’ll do what I have to-“

“Don’t die,” Athenril repeats again, because it’s become second only to her own survival. Bethany has given up everything once; Athenril can’t stand to see her do it again.

She nods.

Athenril’s grim smirk turns to a relieved smile, and before she can stop herself, re-evaluate, tell herself it’s a horrible mistake, she leans in and pins the mage - taller than her by a hair, really, something she’d noticed before but never really thought about - against the soot-covered, smoke-scented wood, a hand on either side of her.

“Don’t die,” she repeats again, and tilts her head close enough for only the briefest of kisses for good luck.

And then she retreats, slinking into the shadows of refuse and rubble even as Bethany’s name is shouted by a strained templar.  _Don’t die_ , Athenril thinks, until she sees Bethany disappear back into the fray.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, as far as Athenril knows, Bethany isn’t dead.

 _As far as she knows_. It’s an important element to it all. She sits on one of the quays as her current set of helpers and lackeys and comrades move goods behind her. The Coterie, the Merchant’s Guild, the Carta- they’re all going to be pissed, but they’re not the ones out here. They’re cowering. They refuse to do the clean-up of carrying over dead bodies in a city that’s still not sure it’s really alive.

If she goes back over her life in this mess of a city, with its endless tangled stairs and its blood and ash and dirt, she can count on one hand the number of kisses she’s bestowed that haven’t been mockery to the dying. She’s thirty-three years old and has lived here for over fifteen of those, and those moments number less than five. It’s too dangerous. It’s a vulnerability. The Rose is for a different sort of release, and _affection_  is not something to be freely gifted, not when it can cut deep and leave her guts spilled on those same damnable steps.

But as far as she knows, Bethany Hawke is alive, and she may never know more than that.

It’s acceptable.

It’s distant.

Perhaps it’s time to find a different city for good. She stares out at the harbor, all but empty of ships, and at the Gallows beyond, the Twins and their chains beyond that, and somewhere distant the horizon of the Waking Sea. Perhaps this time she won’t need to get run out of the city to start somewhere new for a while.

But there’s Tomwise, and there’s her understanding with everybody in Kirkwall, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever know the ins and outs of another city quite as well.

She’s tethered to these docks the same way as any ship, but without the inevitable release for better ports.

It’s a stupid sentiment. She  _could_  leave. She could physically walk out of the gates, dive into the harbor, slink through the sewers until she hits the floodplains beyond the walls. But Kirkwall has become, in its twisted little way,  _home_. Hawke is her Champion. These dead are her dead. She’ll take from their pockets and their mouths, but she’ll also see them burned.

Nobody leaves Kirkwall except by dying. She’s seen it again and again.

There are steps on the stone behind her, and she glances over her shoulder. Hilgrud, with a few fresh scarlet cuts across her cheeks and an aching walk, pads down the quay and comes to crouch next to her.

“Almost done,” Hilgrud says, softly. Athenril nods. “And Shey says that the Coterie is starting to move again out of Hightown.”

“Time to play diplomat, I suppose,” Athenril says, hissing as she pushes herself to her feet. Her soles are singed from the night before, but she does her best to walk as if uninjured. Hilgrud follows close behind.


	18. R is for Reverberations

The Blooming Rose, bless its curling, perfumed heart, is just shy of untouched. Some of the banners are scorched, and some furniture was damaged when it was used to barricade the doors, but the oxmen never came this way, too busy cutting off viscounts’ heads and raising up Hawke as a Champion.

Which means that the next afternoon, Athenril can be one of the few patrons in the broad lounge, feet in Jethann’s lap as he idly twists the stopper of a delicate phial.

“Is this all I’m good for now? Foot massages?”

“I’m not asking you for a massage,” Athenril says, frowning and nudging her heel against his thigh. She hisses and reconsiders. “You’re just the only person I know with an immense supply of lavender oil. Just- get to it.”

“Testy,” he says, but he at least removes the stopper and drips the heady liquid into his palm, running his fingers through it before he sets the phial aside and begins lightly smoothing it on to her singed soles. “Lose money in the attack? Have bets on the viscount making it through the night?”

“I didn’t lose anything,” she counters, a little more harshly than she needs to.

“We made money,” says Hilgrud from where she’s sitting with her back against the front of the couch, replaiting her hair. There’s any number of men and women willing to help her with the task, but the girl is still quiet and still keeps to herself.

“Well, then. No reason to be so sharp,” Jethann says with a sly smile as he works the oil between her toes.

“I walked over coals to get here,” she mutters, and he laughs.

“Yes. I can see that.”

The oil is taking away the worst of the burn, better than Seheron aloe would. It’s a fair sight cheaper, too, even if it’s still dear to anybody but a whore who uses it as a matter of occupational pride. She gives in and sinks against the cushions, staring up at the ceiling as Jethann takes her other foot in hand.

“Just relax, darling,” he purrs, and she grunts in response. His touch is perfectly light, and his voice with its lilt is more than soothing, except that Athenril keeps thinking about a head of dark hair that,  _as far as she knows_ , is still attached to a living, breathing body far down the Kirkwall stairs and across the water.

It’s echoed through her for the entire day, a quick, awkward brush of lips with a girl who’s not a girl anymore. If she were a more foolish woman, she would call it affection. As it is, she grudgingly terms it infatuation, and ignores any meaning but restless energy in how she slips the Nevarran hair comb from her pocket and begins to turn it over in her hands.

“That’s a pretty trinket,” Jethann says, and she looks down the length of her narrow body to him. “Bringing us gifts now, are you? Careful, I’m going to start thinking that you  _like_  me.”

“It’s not for you,” she says, and he heaves a pointedly dramatic sigh.

“I didn’t think you were the type for jewels,” he tries again, and she knows he’s trying to ferret out just who the comb is for, but the truth is, she doesn’t rightly know. She can’t pass it on, and Bethany already lost it once.  _She_  certainly can’t wear it.

It’s a monument, then, like the statue for Hawke that everybody seems to be talking about. A monument worth quite a bit of money, and a monument that she knocked Gamlen Amell on his back to retrieve.

She turns it over again, then glances down to find Hilgrud watching her.

Almost three years now since she took the girl in. She’s gangly and quiet and quick, and  _still there_. She hasn’t run off, hasn’t died, hasn’t been turned against her, and Athenril realizes with a sinking feeling that she would care if any of those things happened to her.

More tethers.

Jethann is sliding his whole palm over her foot now, and the pain is all but gone, the air thick with the scent of flowers. It will hurt again when she stands, but the Rose is quiet and she can afford a languid afternoon. The Merchant’s Guild is a little too close for comfort right now, but the deal she struck with the Coterie the night before seems to be working out. No assassins have waltzed through the door yet, and she hasn’t felt the tickle of poison in her throat.

“I think I might stay a while,” Athenril says, slipping the comb back into her pocket.

“Glad to hear it,” Jethann says, then moves to her other foot.

 

* * *

 

She leaves by nightfall.

The problem is that she doesn’t own any of the warehouses. She doesn’t have the same connections and the same pull that any of the other major players have. The caves on the Wounded Coast are rife with slavers, Darktown is Coterie territory, and the Merchant’s Guild has a firm and  _legal_  hold on everything above the surface, it seems. The Carta fills the gaps.

Which leaves her in need of buyers, and fast, if she wants to keep any major part of her profits.

It would be easier if she had a trusted lieutenant who wasn’t a girl going on thirteen who isn’t even a Kirkwall native. It would be easier if she thought she could stake out territory, leave somebody there to guard it, and then relax for a little while. Two days sounds good, two days with her little closet of a room that’s dark and safe- safe because the Rose is neutral territory, safe because she trusts Lusine and the others.

Back when she had Hawke and Aveline and Bethany, she had had, if only for a year, people she could trust. It had given her just the slightest leeway. She remembers _wholly_  trusting another person to make a sale for her, to guard cargo for her, and not needing to make this mad dash to find buyers on burn-toughened feet, no time to even let a poultice take care of the damage. She remembers not racing against the clock before somebody came in and offered protection for a cut, warehouse space for coin.

But this is how she has to get by in Kirkwall. Everybody’s out to screw her except a few naive Fereldans, and in time, even they learn how to become Champion or Captain of the Guard. Either that or they mess up and end up a slave with a too-sweet face and-

She doesn’t have time for that.

Maybe she finally needs to find the right moment to get laid. It’s been at least five years now - she doesn’t particularly feel like counting. Back then it was a girl from the Coterie, and she still counts herself lucky that things didn’t turn too complicated in the wake of it. If Lusine has a new girl, one who isn’t going to last the month, then maybe…

 _Or_ , she thinks as she looks across the quiet barracks room at one guardswoman Brennan who is inspecting casks of good brandy as well as the shipping notices tracing back where to get it and better from (on behalf, though she’d never say it aloud, of the good seneschal), she should take the opportunity now. Strong walls, another neutral space (more or less), and if the woman is willing-

What is she  _thinking_?

She’s in Aveline Vallen’s territory with burned feet and work to do. But Aveline Vallen’s territory is well-guarded, is safe, and she doesn’t have to give an ounce of trust to whoever’s bunk she winds up in.  _Athenril with a guardswoman_. It has a nice idiotic poetry to it.

Brennan looks up.

Athenril puts on her best, lazy smirk and winks.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t work.

Oh, she ends up in a tangle of lips and limbs with the woman, not in a bunk but in a back storage closet down beneath the seneschal’s office. Brennan has a grip like steel and a tongue to rival hers. She’s nothing like Athenril imagines Bethany would be.

But therein lies the problem. Every moment, every motion, Athenril finds herself comparing to some fanciful ideal of a girl she’s barely touched, and by the time she leaves the Viscount’s Keep (without its viscount now, or any head beyond the one seated on  _Hawke’s_ shoulders), the infatuation is as sharp as ever. A satisfied body does not a satisfied mind make, and in the end, all that she’s lost is time.

And sanity.

She slips past Sergeant Melindra on the way out and somehow makes her way back to Lowtown undetected by anybody of any importance. The stench of ill-advised sex clings to her, she’s almost certain, but in Lowtown that’s the topnote on the wind, at least beneath the pervasive rankness of death and fire. Any other day she would have blended right in. Today-  _tonight_ \- she only cuts an indulgent figure.

Hilgrud meets her by where Elegant usually sets up her stall. The corner is empty save for rubble now. It will be at least a week, maybe more, before the woman is back, which means Athenril will have to account for that as well. Her brain trips over thoughts of a muscled back and how it would compare to a much softer, paler one before she slams it into working again, fingers light between Hilgrud’s shoulder blades as she listens to her report.

They have six hours before the Coterie’s allowance of free operation ends, but the Carta has already taken one of their caches. Merchant’s Guild is requesting a meeting.

Her feet ache, but there’s little she can do but press on and try to keep her wits about her.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, she’s taking a risk she’s never considered taking before. It’s surprisingly easy to keep to the shadows in the Gallows courtyard - the sun is high, leaving the slashes of dark thick and cloying. The templars aren’t looking for a mundane little elf; all those flinty eyes are trained on mages instead.

Bethany is nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t expect to be that lucky.

It’s the Tranquil who are the biggest problem. The mages will look the other way in hopes that she’s come to rescue them, while the templars keep to their duties. It’s the Tranquil woman who almost says something when she sees a flash of blonde and leather, but Athenril is gone before anything can happen.

Around the corner, through the gate- the gate is up, and it takes only a wink to Solivitus, an old friend, to distract the templars enough for her to slip through.

She supposes she could have walked in. The knight-commander takes visitors, on occasion. But if she’s going to break the rules once, she might as well go for a full sweep. Up the stairs, into the hall out of the beating sun- and there.

It’s a risk, of course; what looks to be the knight-commander’s office is right across the hall. But it pays off. She’s sitting at the head mage’s desk when he opens the door, her feet up on the wood, ankles crossed. He’s alone, and the door across the hall is still shut tight.

For a moment the greying elf only stands there, scowling at her.

She quirks a brow.

She waits for a flash of flame or some sort of winding paralysis to pin her limbs, but instead he only steps inside the threshold and shuts the door behind him.

“Care to explain yourself?”

Athenril shrugs and goes to stand (after all, her point is made, and she would prefer to have some movement), but the air turns suddenly heavy. She grunts under a weighted push. Orsino stands impassive.

“No need to get friendly,” she says.

It’s his turn to lift a brow. “The templars,” he says, “will drag out trespassers as well as mages. Believe me when I say that’s not a fate I recommend. Start talking, if you would.”

“I have something. For Bethany Hawke.”

It’s Hilgrud’s fault. The girl caught her playing with the old gift again, and finally asked where it came from. Three days to think on it, and on Brennan’s head between her legs, and it’s brought her here to show her foolishness to the world, if the world rested in the eyes of the silver-haired elf across from her.

“Bethany?” he asks, brow furrowing. The pressure on her lifts enough that she can pull her legs from the desk. “Is it from our new Champion, then?”

“No. It’s from me. I’m an old- associate.” Athenril tries to reach for her hip pouch, but the weight is too much. She clears her throat.

He taps a finger to his thumb and the pressure relocates to only her thighs. _Manageable_.

She pulls free the comb and holds it up, waggling it in the now-fading sunlight. “I want this to go to her, and only her. Can you do that, or do I need to break in to her cell?” Not that she thinks she could, or that she should risk it. Even ignoring guards, seeing Bethany might cement this infatuation to affection, and she’ll be lost to it, tied not to the thought of a girl, but to a breathing woman in the Gallows.

Orsino eyes the trinket, then crosses the distance between them and reaches out a hand expectantly.

“Can you do it?” she repeats again.

“I can,” Orsino says. “As long as it’s just a comb.”

“And what else would it be?” she asks, shaking her head and dropping the ornament into his gloved palm. His long fingers curl around it and he lifts it up, turning it over. “Some sort of magical portal out of here? That’s more your department than mine, I think.”

“No bombs in the beads, then?” His brow arches. He’s a striking man, for all that his shoulders are bowed from the weight of templar blows. He has nimble fingers, and the way he pockets the comb-

 _Ah_. She thinks she has a good idea of where he came from before he came here.

“Just a comb,” she says, and at last the pressure relents. “Oh- and one additional thing. To go with it”

“… Yes?”

She’s on her feet again with a smug sense of satisfaction, and she crosses the room to him without hesitation. He takes a step back and she matches it with two, and then she catches the man’s shoulder in her good hand and keeps him still enough that she can lean in and kiss him.

It’s a brief thing that makes him go rigid with shock, and she pulls back with a fierce grin.

“Pass that on to her,” she says. “A kiss from me. The name’s Athenril.”

 

* * *

 

She’s a fool.

She’s a blighted, Fereldan-fancying fool, and as she at last sinks down into the dark, narrow confines of her closet at the Rose, Hilgrud curled on the floor beside her, she goes through every way that this could be what finally kills her.


	19. S is for Seneschal

She spits blood from a split lip as the two erstwhile members of Kirkwall's guard drag her over the entrance to what is somehow still known as Viscount's Keep, picking up her feet at the last second to avoid broken toes. It's a small mercy that Brennan doesn't have either of her elbows. Instead, it's Sergeant Melindra and a man she doesn't know the name of, and they're passingly gentle now that her right eye is already swollen shut and her arms are marked with bruises.

They drag her through the main entrance - strange enough on its own, though it is late evening and there are fewer petitioners now that there's no viscount to see - but instead of turning towards the guardhouse, they instead haul her up the main stairs. She gives a half-hearted jerk just to remind them she still doesn't appreciate being manhandled, but she takes the steps rather than stumble and fall. The game has been over since they wrestled her up from Lowtown. Bribes, a swift kick to the nuts, and general slipperiness have gotten her nowhere. They're determined, and  _silent_ , and infuriatingly good at their jobs.

Aveline's doing, no doubt.

They take a left, towards the seneschal's office, and Athenril's scowl turns to a confused frown. No new shackles to keep the dirty elf contained while he talks to her? Is he displeased with his brandy, then? She walks the last steps cooperatively, and is rewarded by a slight relaxing in Melindra's grip.

For a moment, she calculates her odds of breaking free and making the jump down to the main floor with minimal injuries. But then she decides that the risk is too great, and waits as the guardsman knocks.

"We have the smuggler," Melindra calls out, and is answered by a brief,

"Let her in."

Her captors exchange a glance over her head, then push her forward as the man opens the door. She does her best not to stumble. A boot connects with her ass and she instead focuses on not falling on her face.

She manages her knees before the door closes behind her.

"Nice welcome," she says, shying on barely from another reddened spit. The man across from her, with all his legendary studied blandness, wouldn't appreciate a stained carpet. She'll keep it for later, if it becomes necessary.

"They acted under their own initiative on that matter," Bran says, sitting behind his desk and barely glancing up from what would have been a mountain of paperwork on anybody else's desk. He, though, has somehow managed to organize it all. It's a forest instead - multiple towering trunks in some kind of order.

She snorts. "So, what is this? Aveline taking a new tack on cracking down on crime, now that she's got our Champion behind her? Or is this straight up Hawke's doing?"

"Neither." He writes something, considers it, then sets his quill down and looks her over. "I have a business proposition of sorts."

She stares him down and shifts to sit, back against the door. "I'm listening."

"Of course, this isn't official business. I expect it to not go beyond this room."

She blinks placidly. He sighs and opens a desk drawer, pulling out a coin purse that looks decently heavy.

"This is for discretion," he says, considering it without the toss or roll she's used to of a man considering coin. " _If_  you assist in a few more shadowed matters of state, you will also receive a stipend."

 _Ah_.

"Keep talking," she says, pain fading to a background beat.

"Do I have your silence, then?" he asks, at last hefting the small leather pouch, curling his fingers in the way that says he's marking the contents, going over them one last time.

She smiles thinly. "Do I have your coin?"

He tosses the purse and it lands by her knee.

Athenril nods, fingers itching where they're bound behind her back. She does her best to look at ease, bending one leg at the knee and wiggling her toes into the rug. "Alright, start talking. If the job sounds good, you'll have me."

"Indeed." He shakes his head and rises, rolling his silk-clad shoulders. "I hear you have had dealing in Antiva before?"

"Once, yes. A few years ago. Nothing that's current, though."

"That's fine. Preferable, even. Do you speak the language?"

" _Si_. A little." Not much at all, in truth, but in Antiva there are many options for those who don't speak her tongue. She managed once, she can manage again. 

"I suppose that will suffice. And do you have many reasons to remain here in Kirkwall?"

 _Bethany_.

It's laughable and shameful how fast the word comes, followed quickly by the image of her. Others follow.  _Hilgrud_.  _Tomwise_. Even Aveline has a place, small though it is, and maybe Merrill beside her. Hawke, great Champion now, and Jethann and Serendipity-

"No. I don't," she says, and if she says it enough and puts enough distance between herself and the City of Chains, perhaps it will come true.

"Good." He nods and moves to the sideboard to pour himself a measure of brandy -  _her_  brandy. Good to see that her original deduction was correct. "With the recent attack and growing discussion of the knight-commander's role in Kirkwall, as well as the absence of a new viscount, there are those among our trading partners who are looking for... better harbors. I would like you to go to Antiva, to reassure them that our port remains open and our city prosperous. I'll be sending along bribe money, as well as access to local resources." 

If it weren't for that cultivated blandness, she would laugh in his face - or take his gold and run. But instead she leans forward and quirks a brow, painfully pulling against the swollen side of her face. "And what stops me from just hauling off with the money?"

"The knowledge that if you succeed, you will receive a cut of future official trade to Kirkwall for the next decade. A small percentage, of course, but... more than enough for a comfortable living. There is also a small estate in Hightown that is current unoccupied, if it interests you."

 _The next decade_. Athenril has to fight not to inhale audibly at that. A Hightown estate has some symbolic appeal, but it's the promise of steady income, as long as the city doesn't burn down to ash, that has her heart quickening. It doesn't require a permanent base, doesn't require protecting her marks from the Coterie.

It's an extremely attractive offer, and if it also gets her out of Kirkwall and away from mooning at the Gallows, then all the better.

She rolls her aching shoulders back against the wood of the door. "And you think I can do this?" she asks, matching his blandness with some measure of detachment.

His voice has the barest edge of wryness to it in return. "From what I've heard, yes."

"The Coterie is going to be pissed."

"The Coterie," he says, scowling for just a moment, "does not want to be involved, for fear of setting off a Crows' nest. The same with the Carta. Believe me, I have put out... feelers. Besides, their organizations are too large. I feel better entrusting such a quiet task to a single person."

"Of course." She smirks at that. Hilgrud will come too, of course, and maybe one or two others. She didn't waltz into Antiva alone the first time, and she won't a second. But Hilgrud and a few others are no Coterie, and the good seneschal doesn't need to know that. "When do you want me to go?"

"As soon as you are able. I would prefer that you take ship, though if that's objectionable, I am sure I can find a caravan for you to ride with?"

Athenril fights a smile. "No objections here."

 

* * *

 

They're becalmed outside of Ostwick. Athenril finds herself on deck leaning against the rail, idly working a copper across the backs of the fingers of her left hand. Her right remains gloved even though she is stripped down to clothing more fitting for the warm, relentless weather. Her skin is already pink and chapped, and the hammock that night will be close to unbearable, but the resulting tan will serve her well when she slips into Rialto.

It's hard to ignore the scars tracing her forearms, though, the puckered rises where the ropes had bitten deep the last time she had seen Ostwick from a ship. Her last trip to Antiva she had spent much of her time below deck. Now the sun glints off the still surface of the water and the miserable little city looms up even before the horizon.

Her arms ache from remembered agony.

But this is a far cry from that trip to Ostwick. The ship she's on is as legitimate as merchant ships get. The human freight are not slaves but laborers who can roam the ship and often help the sailors. There are no bonds on her; no rope or chains to hold her down, no ring of office or writ in her back pocket to say she works for the viscount's seat. Hilgrud is asleep.

She slips the coin back into her pocket and rubs at her arms. The hurt dulls.

She has no memory of watching the Gallows retreat behind the cliffs of Kirkwall. When the time came to set sail, she had sequestered herself below. Until that moment, she had planned on seeing it go, on knowing without a doubt that she was leaving her fool feelings behind, at least for a year or so. But then it had seemed too sentimental, and she had found work to do.

Now she pictures it until at last she pushes away from the railing. Bethany Hawke came to Kirkwall on a ship, but the ship had crossed the Waking Sea, not traveled along it. Bethany Hawke will never see Antiva.

If she ever sees Bethany Hawke again, it will be too soon.

"Copper for your thoughts?"

Athenril starts and turns to find Hilgrud watching her with those dark eyes that still seem so innocent. Her hair is in twin braids and she's dressed down to nearly nothing, and she's holding a coin out, wagging it gently.

Athenril pushes her hand aside.

"You have better things to concern yourself with, I'm sure," Athenril says. "I'm sure half the crew is playing Diamondback or Wicked Grace right now."

"You told me not to make enemies," the girl says.

Athenril can't quite help her smile, and she gives in and plucks the coin from Hilgrud's fingers. "Thinking about old wounds, is all." Hilgrud's gaze drops to her arms, and Athenril snorts. "Yes. Those."

"You've never told me how you got them."

Athenril rubs her thumb over the coin to wipe off a smear of dirt, then pauses as she realizes that it's the same coin she had been dancing over her fingers. She shakes her head with a widening smile.

"You never asked."

 

* * *

 

She would never willingly go down to the beaches of Kirkwall for a day's respite. Even the Wounded Coast, with its distinct lack of rotting fish and trash, is too blood-stained and echoes with the shouts of bandits and Tal-Vashoth.

On a good day.

But in Antiva City, for all  _its_  rotting fish and trash, has a few nice spots. It might be that she retreats to beside the sea because the sea is closer to Kirkwall, and to home. Or it might be because she's found a safe patch of sand that she can dig her toes into, a safe span of rock that, warmed by the sun, she can rest on, eat, and think.

Hilgrud's taken to the sweltering, humid heat as well as she did a few years back, though this time she's gone and cut her hair short. They've been in Antiva now for six months and are in the days where the sun should be cooling and yet it still seems to burn. Her shoulders have gone from reddened to freckled and sun-kissed, and her Antivan is now better than Athenril's.

The girl is quick, quicker than Athenril can ever seem to remember. She's made for this sort of life, the quiet side of it.

Now she's working a small blade in between oyster shells, cracking them open and slurping them down. Athenril waves away the one she proffers next. Oysters have never been her thing, not without a lot of cooking. Maybe it's the buckets of them she had to eat to get by as a child.

There's a  _plunk_  as Hilgrud tosses the empty shells aside and reaches for another, but there is no rasping of blade against hinge. It's Athenril's cue to look over her shoulder, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun. Coming across the rocky beach with its coarse sand and dried kelp is a man in the livery of a noble's house, long-sleeved and high-necked even in this weather.

She waits patiently, more than willing to let the red-cheeked fool wear himself ragged on the approach.

Hilgrud sheathes her knife and sets down her catch, one of only five remaining, and tugs at the heavy gloves she wears. Her question is silent:  _Do we know him_?

Athenril's calm is her answer.

" _Señora_  Athenril?"

The man is doing a decent job of keeping his accent to a minimum, which suggests long practice. Athenril runs through the list of contacts she's expecting to hear from. Two are nobility, one with obvious foreign ties and one without. She expects that this is the one with - a very important figure, and a necessary trading partner.

She stands and tries not to grimace or wince at how her knees ache. A life of running and jumping - she will need a healer soon, not an herbalist. Perhaps when she's back in Kirkwall. The idea of seeking out the Antivan Circle doesn't particularly appeal.

"That's me," she says, lazily striding from her stone perch and dropping to the far less comfortable sand. The man looks her over appraisingly. He doesn't seem impressed, not until Hilgrud looms over them both, her shadow falling across them. "I take it you're here for something?"

"My master requests your presence. Now, if it pleases you."

"And if it doesn't?"

"He said to tell you that the deal is off, and his business will be going elsewhere."

 _Ah_. Yes, definitely the one with foreign ties. She rolls her shoulders and works her too-hot hand in its glove. "I suppose that now pleases me, then. Lead on."

Antiva City is no Kirkwall. It sprawls outward, half of it networked by canals built into the foundation of the city. They take paved roads, however, beneath balconies that spill with flowers and vines, avoiding the less savory parts, the brothels and the cesspits, the tanneries and the burnyards. She knows the layout decently well by now, though they spent the first two months in Rialto. She remembers enough from the last visit. She knows where to avoid stepping lest she stumble into any wayward Crows, and knows who she can and can't filch from.

What she doesn't recognize at first is the direction her guide leads her in. It's Hilgrud, appearing at her elbow and whispering, "Rufino Ortega de Seleny," that makes her reorient.

 _Not_  the one with foreign ties.

... Interesting.

The townhouse they reach is fine indeed, tall with multiple balconies with whole gardens unique to each, banners and painted shutters, and what looks like a rooftop with screens and beds, a high-class echo of how the poor are shoved onto the tops of tenements. The casements are painted and the whole thing would have looked gaudy anywhere outside of Antiva. As it is, it's almost- elegant.

She steps through the servant's door she's led to and tries not to notice the too-thin elves who work the kitchen.

There's nothing strange about it, though the servants of the rich are often decently fed from scraps. Antiva, like every other place in Thedas, has its Alienages, has its serving men and women working for pittances. And yet something keeps tugging at her gaze. Luckily their guide leads them to a narrow set of stairs, and with the stairs comes near total blackness. Her eyes rest a moment.

And then they're let into a well-appointed sitting room, with fine rugs, great open windows onto a small courtyard that cools the space, and finely carved mahogany furniture, the wood brought all the way from Seheron. Standing by one of the windows in a thin white shirt (linen, she thinks, or cotton, and then she focuses on more important things) is their contact, a man she knows only by name. He has tanned skin and a high, dark hairline, his jaw shaded by finely cultivated stubble. He wears bangles and goes barefooted, but it seems affected. Something in the way he still keeps his trousers cut in the more continental style, instead of fully indulging his love affair with Llomerynn fashion...

He turns to them fully and the door to the stair shuts behind. His glance skims her, then moves to Hilgrud at her shoulder.

"Your name?"

Athenril doesn't glance to Hilgrud, and if Hilgrud is at all smart, she doesn't glance to Athenril. "Gertrude," she says. It was her choice to take a fake name upon crossing the border, and Athenril doesn't begrudge her it.

"Well, Señora Gertrude-" the name and honorific clash horribly- "shall I have dinner sent up for us? I would like very much to speak to you - I've only heard rumors about you. Distant ones."

Athenril stiffens, but waits.

"Where I go," Hilgrud says, "my associate follows."

"That's not necessary. You are a guest in my home."

"And she isn't?"

He inhales audibly, a put-upon and faked sigh as he tilts his head back and brings his shoulders up. His shrug is languid but still tense, a delicate balance. Bran would be impressed, if not for the theatrics.

"Must I make myself obvious? It removes the romance, don't you think? I would like a dinner, alone with a lovely woman. Business can wait."

There's Fereldan steel in Hilgrud's voice when she replies, "No. It can't."

 _Good girl_.

There's something about the man, an oily sheen in act if not in body. She tries to place it as Rufino fails to hide the momentary curl of his lip. "Very well. Perhaps afterwards, then."

Athenril would have said  _no_. A coyer woman might have said  _perhaps_.

Hilgrud says nothing.

"Or now. We may all eat now."

"Business," Hilgrud says, and he sighs and gives in, making a great show of gesturing them to a set of chairs. There are enough for all three, Athenril notes. The man can hardly be too heart-broken, even if he won't do more than glance aside at her.

He doesn't know her. He won't get the chance to, either.

They settle, and Athenril bites down on the urge to begin. Hilgrud has watched enough of these exchanges and participated in just as many, and she leans forward as if it's the easiest thing in the world, as if she belongs here.

"We've only come to bring news that Kirkwall's harbors remain open. There is still money to be had there." Money, like the coin purse on Athenril's belt. It's a copper compared to what they have on hand, should they need it, but Athenril has never been one to spend more than is absolutely necessary.

"I have no doubt," Rufino says, leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs. The bottoms of his feet are perfectly clean, a stark contrast to Athenril's own. 

"Can we have your assurance that you will not cease trade with Kirkwall, then?"

He inspects his nails, buffed to a dull and even shine. "Can I have your assurance that you're here on behalf of the city?"

"We have a portion of the city's coffers at our disposal. So, yes."

Rufino closes his eyes and taps his fingers together a moment. "Money to be had," he repeats, turning the sounds over. "... Perhaps, if Kirkwall fears losing some of its revenue, an arrangement can be reached."

Hilgrud's voice remains flat. "Arrangement."

"Yes. The viscount, may the Maker keep his soul, was very firm-"  _the seneschal was very firm_ , Athenril corrects silently, "that certain... activities could not be allowed in his city. Which isn't to say that they never did, but without even the sort of unofficial official sanction that your bribes speak to, bargaining was out of the question. But now that he has passed beyond the Veil, poor soul... well."

She can hear the hardening in her protege's voice, though to any outside listener it might very well seem just the same - stoney, unaltering. "Stop being coy."

He snorts. "Coy, is it? Cautious, perhaps. But I suppose Kirkwallers and Fereldans aren't known for their subtlety." He sits forward, elbows on the arms of his chair. "If Kirkwall's powers that still remain allow my associates to work freely and take a small percentage of your city's unwanteds, they will receive a larger percentage of the profits."

"Unwanteds," Hilgrud repeats as Athenril feels her face freeze and her muscles tense.

"Those parts of Kirkwall that would be better off elsewhere. With consistent employment, so to speak." He smiles, and every inch of him seems to drip with oil that she now knows the exact flavor of, the consistency of.

 _Unwanteds_. Elves. Fereldans. Everybody rotting in Darktown, clapped in irons or with rope binding their arms until there's nothing but festering sores and a life as chattel, as objects, as-

 _Slaver_  flashes through her mind as she leaps forward from her chair, in one fluid motion pulling daggers from her hips. Perhaps she's taller than he thought, or she moves lower than he expected, but she catches him as he stumbles back. Her arms burn and itch, and there's a wild image of  _Bethany_ , letting herself be led off in chains, and then-

Blood streaks her face, hot and metallic, and the man's scream is gurgled through the slit in his throat. He claws at her as her heel finds his groin and kicks, sending him falling back. There's noise at the door, guards, and then shouts, thuds... and silence.

Athenril stands over the slaver's corpse, catching her breath and thinking only that it's been a surprisingly long time since she's killed a man.

"Athenril," Hilgrud warns. The door creaks open, but a quick glance reveals nothing. She shifts her hold on her daggers before turning.

"I'll take you as well, if I must," Athenril calls, voice ragged. Her muscles recoil, ready to loose and spring.

Whoever it is chuckles. "I am sure."

There's noise to the right of the open door, where she can see the guard slumped in slowly expanding pools of blood. Athenril shifts her weight and steps away from her own corpse, advancing slantways and watching for any hint of attack.

"Normally," the voice continues, and it belongs to another man, with a more lilting accent, "I would object to somebody interfering with a contract... but seeing as how I made the current contract with myself? Ah, I suppose allowances may be made." The elf who steps from the shadows has tanned, lined skin and an easy smile, an easy gait as he steps over the strewn chairs and crouches by the dead man. "I do believe he pays Crows for his protection, however. You may wish to make yourself... scarce."

Athenril retreats, keeping her distance and her blades between them. Hilgrud has moved to the door and edged it shut, and is trying the staircase door. Their guest doesn't appear to care.

"Is Treviso far enough?" Athenril asks, beginning to adjust plans even as she pulls back towards Hilgrud. Bran won't be happy - but Bran never said she wasn't allowed to use her own judgment.

"No." He shakes his head and stands, kicking the man in the gut. "Did you know, he once helped Tevinters take two ships full of elves from Denerim's alienage? No, no, I suppose not." He  _tsk_ s beneath his breath. "Old history now."

"Who are you?" Athenril asks, though she expects no name and would give none in return. She scrubs at the blood on her chin with the back of her gloved hand, a tiny show of trust in hopes of an answer.

"A dead man who still knows how to walk and run," he says with that same easy laugh. "Now out with you. There are things yet to be done here, but I think I'll have the doing of them."

She falls back as Hilgrud opens the servants' stair door. The shadows are welcoming, and the sun is beginning to set, which means long slashes of dark across the city streets. She's already making a map in her head as she slips down several steps, forcing the image of their unexpected comrade from her mind. Better to forget, after all. Impermanence, when she can afford it.

But Hilgrud doesn't follow, and Athenril glances back.

"You said you contracted yourself?" Hilgrud asks, and Athenril pauses on the steps just long enough to hear his answer.

"Hobbies are good for the soul."

 

* * *

 

Autumn is not the  _best_  time to be on the Amaranthine Ocean, but there could be worse. Still, she spends much of her time on deck, and it isn't because of the sun or the wind. It's because her stomach has taken to roiling, and no amount of salt pork or even expensive candied ginger will soothe it.

Still, they've made it out of Antiva alive. The ship is set for the Marches. If the seneschal complains, she will point to the work she was able to do and then walk out of his office. She has at least made contacts. She at least left behind the City of Chains for over half a year.

There are steps approaching, not the sort of a sailor, and Athenril only glances up as a technicality as Hilgrud settles down beside her.

"No luck?" she asks, and Athenril snorts.

"How green am I?"

"Verdant," Hilgrud says, and Athenril quirks a brow.

"Are you a poet now?"

"Everybody needs a hobby," she says, then passes her a length of cord. "The men have been showing me net-making and knot-working. Maybe if you keep your hands busy-"

Athenril shakes her head.

"If I needed to keep my hands busy," she says, letting her head fall back against the railing, "I have far better ideas of how to do it. But the problem is keeping them still, I find."

Hilgrud hums, then leans her head back as well.

"Tell me how you got your glove."

 

* * *

 

When they return to Kirkwall, alive and without a flock of Crows behind them, she doesn't receive an invitation back to the seneschal's office, martial or otherwise. But two months later when trade catches up with Kirkwall, a runner finds her and hands over a coin purse and a deed.

The estate - such as it is - is a little townhouse much smaller than Rufino's, without the ostentation of Antiva or even Hawke's mansion. But it has a nice way out the back and a secret door that leads down into the sewers, and that's all she's ever wanted. The seneschal is a clever, perceptive sort of man.

And somehow, Athenril now has a home.


	20. T is for Tattoos

Feastday of 9:36 Dragon passes without being marked, as it has every year before. There are parties behind closed doors, but they aren’t doors that Athenril picks the locks to. Instead, she sets in order her affairs for the coming winter, and she doesn’t wonder at a holiday she has never had the opportunity to celebrate, save in picking pockets at outdoor gatherings and in selling trinkets in the days before.

First Day, too, comes and is an hour shy of ending without so much as howling winds outside the townhouse’s door. Athenril sits by the fire and mends armor, and tries not to think about the one year she entertained guests for half an hour. There is nobody to bring her home-made stew tonight, and nobody that she wants it from. The Champion is tucked away in a mansion in Hightown, and Bethany (she reminds herself with a firm hand) is gone.

She expects nothing and gains nothing, and she is content.

And then Hilgrud clears her throat.

She lives there now. There are more than enough rooms for both of them, and Athenril trusts nobody more than she trusts the gangly girl, now noticeably taller than she is. There have been sidelong looks from the neighbors at a Fereldan girl and an elf living together in what looks like a house that’s far too nice for either of them, but the guard never come around. It’d idyllic. It’s peaceful.

Hilgrud is sitting on a low sofa, legs crossed under her. Her hair is beginning to grow out again, wisping around her ears. “Athenril?”

“Yes?” Athenril sets down her armor in her lap, then leans back on her good hand.

The girl unfolds herself and goes to the small satchel at the end of the couch. It’s only when the latch gives and she straightens out, a fabric-wrapped parcel in her hands, that she says, “I have something for you. For First Day.”

Athenril isn’t sure if she stares or frowns. The last time she was given a gift- does the meal from the Hawke siblings count for that? She holds out a hand, and Hilgrud passes her the object.

The fabric that it’s wrapped in is from Nevarra, iridescent and soft. Borrowed from one of the crates she lifted a month earlier. Inside is something long, narrow, and a tug at the corner of the fabric reveals a sheathed knife.

She pulls it free and tries not to inhale sharply as the light of the fire catches it.

“Name a gift. I’ll get it for you,” Athenril says, turning over the blade. It is finely made, elegant, and expensive. Knicked from a Hightowner who didn’t know to guard it better? Lifted from a shipment before Athenril saw it? She doesn’t recognize it, but it fits perfectly into her hand, wedges well between palm and splinted fingers.

Hilgrud says nothing, and Athenril glances up to find her looking at the floor, brow drawn and lips pursed. It’s not a familiar expression on the girl. Hilgrud has always been quiet, nearly silent, a shadow and an extension of herself, but she has rarely looked so troubled.

“Say it,” Athenril presses, and her voice holds a snap she didn’t fully intend.

But Hilgrud takes it in stride. If anything, it seems to revive her. She lifts her head. Her throat bobs and her tongue peeks out to wet her lips.

“A tattoo,” she says.

It’s not what Athenril was expecting, and at first she doesn’t know what she’s heard. _Tattoo_  is a word that holds no meaning for the span of a hundred heartbeats.  _Tattoo_ is not  _gold_ , is not  _safety_ , is not a gift she has ever thought of giving or of being asked for.  _Tattoo_.

“What?”

“A tattoo. Like- yours.” The girl-  _woman_ \- gestures to Athenril’s arms, where beneath winter wool are curling bands of blue. There are more, marking silent paths around her body, but Hilgrud only looks to what she’s seen. “… Is that okay?”

Athenril considers a moment, then nods before she’s reached any firm conclusion.

“Yes,” she says, and decides not to question it.

 

* * *

 

She takes Hilgrud to a side street in Lowtown, one they rarely frequent on any jobs. She has an agreement with the artist who lives in the comparatively well-kept home: no leading anybody with murderous intent down his alley unless absolutely necessary to save her hide, and a little coin, and he’s willing to add to the designs she bears on her skin whenever she has the time and inclination. She hasn’t, recently, except for a small line added in the wake of Antiva to remember it by.

He still greets her as warmly as anybody (which is to say, with a nod and a step back so she can enter, and a curious glance as to why she’d come in the middle of the day), going to fetch his tools once the door closes. The house is small, much like Gamlen’s: a main room and two smaller ones, one of which serves as his bedroom, the other as his work room. She leads Hilgrud back.

“What will it be?” the artist asks from where he is crouched in the corner. “It’s for the girl this time?”

“Yeah. She wants a band around her right arm. Blue. Like mine.”

He nods and rises, bringing over a tray of his tools. “Got it.” His lips quirk and draw back over rotted teeth. “Thought you told me never to do another one like it, though.”

He wasn’t the one who started marking her, but he has done the majority of the work over the last decade. She snorts a laugh. “I did, didn’t I. I’m telling you differently now. For her, a blue band, just like mine.”

The man nods, and Athenril sits, tapping the pallet in invitation.

“What will you have it mean?” she asks as Hilgrud settles and the artist mixes his pigments. His needles are ready, his tapper is by his side.

Hilgrud considers.

“What do yours mean?”

Athenril looks down at her, stretched out on her back with her long lanky arm laid out to her side. She could lie. She could keep that to herself. But it’s a necessary lesson, and unlike her name on an old associate’s child, it’s something she wants to pass on.

But it is not a kind lesson.

She softens the blow.

“One of the only things you have-  _really_  have- is you. Your home is in your body. Your belongings are your body. The only way to take that from you is to kill you- and the way to protect them is to fight or to run.”

 _The only thing you have is you_.

Her fingers trace over her own tattoos. She has lived a life of city nomadism, even when she has had enough gold or enough pull to settle down. Too long in one place and she always becomes edgy, fearing her own complacency. The townhouse is her one exception - but she doesn’t plan to stay there forever, not even with the city guard helping to keep it safe.

It’s not safe. Nowhere is ever safe. It’s always better to move than to spread out or put down roots, even if moving is just a few streets over every six months. People need to search to find her. She likes it that way.

She looks down at Hilgrud, the only one who never needs to search, and her lips twitch into a thin smile.  _One of the only things_.

“Got it?”

Hilgrud nods. Athenril looks to the tattooer. “Get to work then.”


	21. U is for Utterance

One of the perks of a Hightown townhouse is that she’s finally in the middle of a different sphere of action. She has learned how to see and feel the thrumming of Lowtown and Darktown. Antiva, too, had given up its rhythms. But Hightown, while it is a walked path, a worked path, has always kept a few of its secrets.

Now it divulges them, vomiting up onto its gleaming pavement the violence of the tallest buildings.

She has a seat for the whole spectacle atop a mansion that faces onto the chantry courtyard. Hilgrud is somewhere down below, taking advantage of the crowd’s focus on the bloody (or soon to be bloody) mess in the center. Orsino’s silver hair glints in the too-bright sunlight, and if the knight-commander wore her hair uncovered, it would rival it.

Their voices spiral up, sharp and jarring. The crowd is all but silent. Athenril listens.

It’s a form of self-preservation, really. The qunari attack was bad enough, but she knows how to avoid a blow from a spear or a sword. A mage rebellion, though- chaos in the streets- she would prefer to be out of town if and when it happens. And Meredith’s martial noose draws even tighter around the city, templars stalking the streets to keep order.

 _Champion_  catches on the pointed tips of her ears, and she straightens. She hadn’t noticed Hawke in the crowd, but there the warrior is, striding out into the clearing in gleaming armor, chin lifted high. Hawke cuts a good figure, she decides, and edges closer to the alley between mansions, ready for a quick way down and out should the meeting turn violent.

She doesn’t need to hear the words, only the tone, and masses of bodies do a good enough job of dampening and muffling. There’s anger, but it hasn’t yet risen to fury. Carefully, she crouches on the tile and dangles a single foot. If - or perhaps when - the mages rebel, that fury will set the whole damn place alight, stone and people both, and maybe some will freeze and some will be zapped until they move only when zapped again. Hawke will no doubt be in the middle of all of it. And Bethany-

Not her concern. Not her job. She can’t afford to think like that and her mind is drawn ever towards it, and so she drops down instead.

She’s turning away to slip down the alleyway she’s landed in when the words reach her. Bodies are good at muffling sound, but stone is good at amplifying it. The knight-commander’s tone and meaning are unmistakable:

“I do not need you or anyone to tell me what my duty is, mage.”

Well, the woman has one thing right, at least - if it weren’t for how many swords she controls, how much reach she has.

Athenril banishes the thought. This is not her fight, and never has been.

Out, then. A signal to Hilgrud, quickly signed as she peeks out into the sunlight-blinded crowd, and then she begins her retreat. Her eyes flit over the center of the plaza. Later, she tells herself she marked no one, not even Orsino pulling back at last from the fray, not even Meredith who continues ever onward.

“Your Grace, he should be clapped in irons, made an example of-“

But she can’t deny that she marks Orsino being led off to the edge of the plaza, down to where the steps will wind away to the Gallows once more. His escort slows for a moment, likely to catch the sight of the lioness going against the lazy old sighthound of a Grand Cleric. She’s slipping back into the shadows, setting determination on her shoulders for the third time, when Orsino looks up and catches sight of her. His brow furrows a moment before one side lifts in question.

She hesitates, then takes her chance, slinking out into the sunlight until she’s close enough that she can watch the fray and listen to whatever it is he has to say to her.

“Bethany,” is the first word out of his mouth, and she stills, “wanted me to pass along her thanks for your gifts, the next time I saw you.”

“Then tell her she is welcome,” Athenril says. Hilgrud is making her way over in a wide winding circle, weaving through bodies and no doubt plucking half of Hightown’s wealth. Her tattoos itch. There is too much risk here, and not enough reward.

Orsino steps closer.

“She also asked me to pass something along to you in turn.”

“This is hardly the time.”

He shakes his head. “This is the only time.”

She tires of this war between flight and bravery (idiocy, foolishness), and perhaps that is why she hesitates long enough for him to come close. It isn’t acceptance, or curiosity - it’s exhaustion.

But she jumps when he kisses her brow, lips curling in a sneer.

“That is all,” he says, except for the feather-light touch of a phantom mouth against hers.

Mages.

 

* * *

 

Worthy counts his coin in the open. It’s another quirk of Hightown, that those who do business here can do so without subterfuge. Everybody has a license. Everybody has at least the ear of the guard, if not the eye. If he wasn’t counting his coin he’d be cleaning his Maker-damned beard, and perhaps if she worked more closely with the dwarf then she’d smile and shake her head.

As it is, she jiggles her foot and waits.

This is the meet up point. Hilgrud should be here by now; the crowd has long-since dispersed, Orsino passing by without so much as a glance. She keeps an eye out for a head of dark hair and tries to look at ease as she leans against the shadowed stone.

Vomiting stone, she remembers herself thinking on top of that building. Clearly she’s becoming a poet.

“So this girl of yours-” Worthy says. He must have finished counting. “Same one? Dark hair, broad jaw?”

“That’s her,” Athenril says, words clipped.

“Damn, she’s been with you a long time.”

“Yes.”

“Raised her from a nuglet.”

In that moment, she would far prefer another ill-advised “gift” from Orsino to listening to the man another second. She’d prefer vomiting stone and prowling lionesses.  _Raised her from a nuglet_  indeed, just like she sent along a kiss to Bethany nearly three years before, only now returned. They’re things she’d rather not dwell on.

Worthy’s waiting for a response, though, and she pinches at the bridge of her nose. “Yes,” she says.

“Then she’s probably still crawling around somewhere,” he says, and the man reaches up one of his long arms and clasps her shoulder. “You’re a hard line to get rid of.”

She grunts in response, then straightens at a scuff of boot on pavement. Her eyes seek out the source. Likely just another drunken noble, she tells herself, but there- dark hair, dusky skin, a flash of blue-

Athenril darts forward just as Hilgrud staggers fully into view, bruised and swollen but with a rather full coin purse.

She catches the girl’s elbow. Hilgrud wavers. It’s barely thirty steps to Worthy’s stall, but they take it slow. At least her bearded company has the decency to step off a moment.  _Raised her from a nuglet_ , Athenril thinks again as she helps Hilgrud sit on the edge of the table, shoving aside bits of metal worked with lyrium.

“What happened?” she demands when Hilgrud is able to meet her eyes, everything clear and well in their depths.

The girl shrugs. “I tried to steal from the Champion.”

Athenril’s lips thin.  _Shit_. “Broken bones?”

“No. Just bruises.” Hilgrud looks herself over. “I’ve had worse.”

Something in her unwinds. “Good,” she says. And then she strikes the back of Hilgrud’s head, open-handed. “Idiot.”

Hilgrud flushes with her wince, then rubs at the spot. “I thought I could do it. Instead I got thrown on the ground and nearly crushed.”

“You’re lucky Hawke only bruised you, girl,” Athenril says. “How’d you get out of that?”

“Easy.” Hilgrud smiles, the small and lazy smile she picked up in Antiva and that goes well with the blue band on her arm.

“I told the Champion I was one of yours.”


	22. V is for Vhenadahl

There’s a templar sweep through Lowtown, and where once it would have only mattered to somebody like Bethany, with Meredith’s growing reach Athenril would prefer not to stand idle where she could be found. But the templars are getting very good at checking alleys (not that their checks do anything to prevent the poverty, the disease, the crime, the profit). The steps to Hightown are too far off, as are the sewers to drop her down to Darktown, where the templars still only reach on a good day, when their Chantry’s sun shines bright.

So instead she ducks into the Alienage. Nobody cares about a warren of elves, though sometimes the gate is dropped. She spares it a wary glance as she passes through the wall, Hilgrud at her heels.

But the problem with the Alienage is that Hilgrud draws more stares than Athenril does, and Athenril is not particularly liked. Tomwise makes his home here, but he’s down in Darktown. Athenril’s never had a home here (and even if she did, others would be using it by now). There’s the Dalish girl-

Athenril doesn’t want to rely on Hawke’s associates, and she remembers the awkwardness of that last visit all too well.

But  _Dalish_  gives her an idea, and she beckons to Hilgrud to follow her. There, beneath the great tree that somehow stretches up healthy and green in the middle of all of Kirkwall’s rot, so different from the usual fungus and mushrooms and deathroot, is Arianni. She has the same distant, pained look she always seems to have, and Athenril approaches with caution.

They’ve spoken on occasion. Athenril has smuggled food in for her, when she has the coin, or passed letters that found their way eventually to the Gallows. She’s a contact, if a small-time one, if a quiet one.

Athenril tugs on the strings connecting them.

“Arianni?”

The older woman turns to face her, expression drawn and shuttered. “What do you want?” Her accent is still strange, distinct from all of Kirkwall, and Athenril tries not to let herself be distracted by the lilt of it, the way she was with Merrill.

“Use of your home, messere.”

Arianni’s nose wrinkles in insult, but Athenril knows no other word for her.  _Serah_  doesn’t have the respect she needs for this, and  _lethallan_  is not her word to use.

“I won’t have you bringing evil into it,” Arianni says. “I will never owe you that much.”

“Evil? What evil?” It is Athenril’s turn for her brow to harden. “I’m just asking for a few walls, that’s all.”

“An alley has walls. All of Kirkwall has walls.”

“But I want yours. Just for an hour.” Athenril leans in close. “I will take whatever you like to your boy-“

“My boy is gone.”

Ah. That explains the new furrows along her face. Athenril pauses, unsure of how to continue. There are likely places to squat, to hide, but there’s also a fair chance they’re already occupied. Which leaves Merrill-

“Please, messere,” Hilgrud says, coming close enough to take Arianni’s hands in hers. “We’ll be quiet, and we won’t bring any harm to your house.”

The girl has learned something of diplomacy, a cant that Athenril never thought of picking up. She watches, rapt, as Arianni slowly inclines her head. “Just for an hour?”

“And no more.”

There is something to be said in this, that Arianni listens to a  _shemlen_  girl before she listens to Athenril, but Athenril sets it behind and follows the two, keeping her head down and trying to look downtrodden just like all the other elves around her.

 

* * *

 

Arianni’s home is small, even by Alienage standards, a single room with no windows and barely enough room to breathe. It’s a cellar dug out beneath another crowded home, and with the templars out, children’s feet beat overhead. But it is cozy and efficient, and when Hilgrud compliments her, Arianni only says,

“It is larger than an aravel.”

Hilgrud has never seen a landship, and the only halla she’s ever glimpsed was a head mounted on a Hightown wall. But she nods along and settles onto the seat of cushions. There’s an equal chance of the pillows being choice or necessity when wood and furniture proved too expensive in a world where shemlen control all trade, but they’re comfortable and exotic all the same.

The smell of damp and rot isn’t exotic, or comfortable, but Athenril has smelled worse.

“Is it true that the elves used to live forever?” Hilgrud doesn’t so much as spare Athenril a glance before speaking, taking the lead in hand even as she widens her eyes and puts on an innocent face. Athenril expects irritation.

Instead, Arianni is only exhausted.

“That is what is said, yes. And then we met humans, and we lost all of that.” She casts her gaze around the rough-hewn walls, the shelves crowded with obscure herbs and tools.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Hilgrud says, and Athenril quirks a brow.

She’s never apologized to  _her_  before.

But Athenril has never needed it, and Arianni seems to. Her shoulders sag a little more. “No harm done by you,  _da’assan_. I loved a human once. Father of my child.”

 _And that is why you’re trapped here instead of remaining a wanderer the rest of your days, however many there might be_ , Athenril almost says. But instead she keeps her council.

Once, she could have lived forever. But that woman would not have been her, and if she prefers the city or not is of no consequence. Idle fancy has never brought her anywhere of worth beyond an evening’s hedonism.

And short-lived or not, Hilgrud has her own sort of magic. Athenril watches her chameleon skin of kind deference. The girl is rarely rude or cruel, but she could be if the need arose. The look she wears now, calm and smiling and attentive, is a variation on her usual theme, but Athenril knows it is carefully chosen. She has seen it at work here and in Antiva.

Hilgrud is who she needs her to be.

“Would you two like a tisane?” Arianni asks, caving to hospitality that Hilgrud has been leading her to from the first.

Athenril defers to Hilgrud.

Her gangly Fereldan girl with the Avvar face and her tattoo shakes her head. “Perhaps another time. But thank you.”

“Another time.”

And Athenril knows she has a new place she can run to, should the templars come again.


	23. W is for Worth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some violence in this one.

Athenril leans back in the upholstered chair by the fire, one heel up on the arm of it. Her brow arches as she regards the ginger-haired man kneeling on the fine rug, Hilgrud's blade at his throat. "So what you're telling me is...?"

"It's something big."

"But the Coterie's not interested."

"They don't know about it yet. It's a single target. There's a lot of guard around it, and I don't even know what's in there. Red stone, is what I've heard, and two possible locations, but all I know for sure is that it's being protected like it's the Divine's chastity belt."

Athenril snorts, then swings a leg over. "And I want this why?"

"Because the Coterie will pay you a lot of money when they get wind of it, that's why." He's doing his best not to sneer and not to glance back to the edges he could make out of Hilgrud. The girl is all dangerous enforcer now, though she's only taken two, maybe three lives in all her years. Her hair, long enough already to brush her cheeks, is wet and stringy from a bath, and she had the good luck to dress in the sort of worn leggings and coarse shirt that implies a ready blade instead of refugee rags. Her hand doesn't tremble, and the way she's set her jaw and brow allows no questions.

Athenril sighs and stands, strolling closer with her arms crossed over her chest. "Do I look like I need the money?" she asks with a nod to the furnishings of the room. None hers, all residential accoutrements that came with the pension and the townhouse, but they're doing a good job of convincing him if she goes by the way his gaze darts around.

He swallows. "I've heard your team is damn good."

"And damn smart."

"Then this is low risk for you, high reward. Even the rich go for that sort of thing."

She comes close enough to lean down and hook a gloved finger beneath his chin. She tilts his face up an inch, then an inch further, enough to prick the back of his neck against Hilgrud's knife. He hisses.

"I want everything you know on this. And if you lure me into a trap, you're dead."

 

* * *

 

The air in the foundry district is oppressively hot, thick with smoke that stinks of coal and burned metal and something astringent she can't quite place and doesn't want to. It's a wretched little part of Lowtown. She prefers even the butchers to this, even on a hot day when their pig banners rot in the sun and vultures come within the city walls to feed. The smell might be worse, but the air is not so thick, the noise not so loud.

Because in the foundry district, the noise never ceases.

It does have its advantages; it's easy enough to hide an operation of this size when you have enough stark shadows, enough soot in the air, enough clanging to hide even a full-on tumble or a death scream. Enough people die here every day. A few more won't be missed.

Hilgrud is on the other side of the chasm that splits the district. Even between her houseguest and her own contacts, they haven't been able to narrow it down. The Coterie knows now, but the sheer uncertainty is what's still keeping them at bay. Tonight is the last sure night they can count on that. She scans the area. They could still back out now. They could still slink off into the night and stick to the usual: the seneschal's stipend, the silk and luxury trade, occasional dabblings in opium. It's made them more than enough of a living.

But sometimes, Athenril dreams a little bigger.

Maybe they'll get a villa on the coast of Rialto Bay. Maybe she'll get it for Hilgrud because she can't get herself out of this city for long. Maybe she'll plan a tattoo to cover her whole back, or maybe she'll bribe some templars to let her slip into the Gallows for a night. Maybe she'll turn generous and donate it all to the Chantry or the guard.

She quashes the thoughts. Maybe she'll turn into a pumpkin and none of this will matter.

Hilgrud has agreed, as have all her current contacts - this is a job worth taking. It's easy enough. In, out, sell for a profit, split amongst equals. She can cast it as doing the Coterie's dirty work, the truce can continue, and she can have a more loyal set of swords than the ones that ran her out of town so many years ago, or put her in irons. She rolls her shoulders.

Two possible targets. Two teams.

She gives the signal.

 

* * *

 

She shoves the man back into the smelting furnace, grimacing against the screams and stench. Her boot is ready to drive him back in each time, until finally the fight is burned out of him.

Athenril steps back.

That's the job. Get in, get the prize, get rich. Little red stone in a little red box. She scans the room.  _There_. It's got to be something big for all this defense. It's got to be something big, like the Orlesian crown jewels, because a ruby on its own wouldn't be worth enough. She crosses the space to it with building excitement that she tempers with the knowledge that she's just the messenger. She's just the go-between. The Coterie is looking for this, and she'll deliver for a hefty sum.

Her fingers touch the lid of the box. Her thumbs open it. Her palms slide over the pillowed center, and then the misshapen gem within.

She closes one hand around it and holds up the small piece of red stone. It pulses through her glove.  _Lyrium_ , she thinks, but it's not like any she's ever seen. It almost sings, and her eyes fall to half-mast. This is what the Coterie's looking for? This is what will get her in nice?

It's just a pretty trinket.

Her fingers curl tight around it. Nobody will mind if it goes missing.


	24. X is for Xiphoid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This installment contains graphic (very graphic) depictions of violence.

“Give me a  _hand_  here?” Athenril hisses. She’s elbow-deep in a man’s chest, blood slicking her arms and armor, grasping for his esophagus. She’s already cut his diaphragm open, and now all that’s left to get the damn thing is to pull his stomach free and empty it on the pavement.

She hates messy jobs.

If it were a situation of  _just_ having a buyer, she’d give it up. She would mark it as a loss and move on. But of course the man, the  _thief_ , had to swallow the gem when her buyer was the whole damn Coterie, and she’d already taken the first half of their gold. She should have just given it to them. She should never have hatched this damn scheme of take the money and run. She should never have tried to keep it for herself, never should have trusted  _him_  when Hilgrud was right there. Athenril snarls and jerks her knife upwards. It hits bone.

 _Sternum? Collarbone_? Her knowledge of anatomy only comes from years of dealing with the dead. Breaking a man’s legs is a lot easier than breaking a femur, a tibia, but sometimes it helps to know the exact terms of what she’s dealing with. The rib cage, the skull, those are important.

Now she just needs to not dull her knife, not chip bone, and not cut her own hand open.

“ _Hilgrud_!” she snaps, turning to look over her shoulder. She doesn’t need her standing guard right now, she needs another set of hands to hold open the slit in the man’s abdomen that she’s working through.

“Somebody’s coming,” is the only response she gets, and then Hilgrud ducks around the corner. Athenril swears. She could try again to cut the man’s throat and wish once more that she’d learned how to hunt, how to gut an animal, so that she could do it to a man - or she could run and just leave town.

Permanently.

The thought doesn’t appeal, even though it’s likely she’ll lose her townhouse anyway. Kirkwall has its hooks in deep, its chains tight, and she grits her teeth and tries again. Her blade finds resistance that’s softer than bone. She wraps her other hand just below where her knife sits and cants her wrist.

It slices free, and she guides the remains of his esophagus out. It might have been easier to cut it lower, she thinks as she yanks against where his slit diaphragm pulls at her, but there’s a chance the damn thing is stuck in his throat, and she doesn’t want to lose it in him. Red doesn’t show up well on red.

She drops it to the pavement and feels for his stomach, guiding it out of the wound. She’ll find it. She has to.

There are shouts on the main street, echoing through the thin dawn light, and Athenril tries not to listen for Hilgrud’s. She doesn’t have the time. She’s made her choice, and Hilgrud has made hers, and if she can just slit his stomach open-

Her gloves are soaked in bile and the remains of half-digested stew, with no stone in sight. She curls her fingers around the base of his esophagus, or what once was, and yanks up. There, resistance, and she could cut it free but it’s already moving and-

It clatters to the ground just as Hilgrud rounds the corner, shouting, “ _Go!_ ” Athenril scrambles up, smeared with blood and offal and clutching the carved piece of red lyrium that is so familiar to her now, that sings and speaks to her through her gloves. She sees Coterie men round the corner, watches as Hilgrud turns. And then the mace falls.

“ _I have your damn prize!_ ” Athenril yells.

But it’s too late. The head of the mace slams into Hilgrud’s chest and Hilgrud’s scream dies with a sickening crunch. She collapses. Athenril can’t see movement, not at first, but that doesn’t stop her from rushing to her side.

Hilgrud’s chest is crushed. But her eyelids flutter and her lips part.  _She’s alive_.

Barely.

Fading.

“Where is it?” the man holding the mace grunts, and she doesn’t even glance up to glare. There is no song now. She just throws the stone, hearing it clatter and slide in its slick. She’s glad to be rid of it. It wasn’t worth the trouble. It wasn’t worth-  _this_.

She touches bloody hands to Hilgrud’s cheeks, and the girl manages another labored breath.

“Take it,” she spits. Her hands are cooling fast, but she imagines Hilgrud cooling faster, and her heart stammers and skips. She can’t move her. She’s no healer, and there’s no way she can get her to Elegant, to Tomwise, to  _somebody_. To Hawke. To Hawke’s mage down in Darktown.

The merciful thing to do would be to slit her throat.

Athenril casts her knife aside, back towards the dead man that brought them here to this moment, to this stuttering out of life.

She swallows thickly and bows her head as footsteps retreat behind her, a derisive  _thanks_ not even making her flinch. “Hey,” she murmurs. “Hey, it’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

Hilgrud can’t speak. She only gurgles, a spot of red leaking onto her lip.

Her only options, then, are to sit here by her side until the life goes out of her, or to run for help. She has people over the city, people she could send for her, but none are close enough. And there’s nobody close enough that she trusts to leave Hilgrud with.

Only a dead man a few feet away, stinking enough to make her want to retch.

She sucks in a shaky breath. “Look,” she says, “I’m not going to leave you. You haven’t left me in, what, six years? I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to stay right here, and we’ll wait, and then…”

 _And then she’ll die_. Athenril has a flash of a ten year old girl, quiet and solemn and filching coin with an amount of charm she could barely comprehend. But charm can’t tie her back together, can’t fix her bones and save her lungs. Athenril’s fingers press just a little harder on her cheeks, then drop to the pavement, trail until they find her hands.

“Hey. You did a good job, Hilgrud. I wouldn’t have had anybody else here.”

The words feel hollow, empty, and she takes a shuddering breath in time with Hilgrud’s. Her face has gone pale, ashen, a dying grey beneath her fading tan. Athenril can’t see her tattoo, and for that she’s thankful - the blood is already too vibrant in comparison. She drops her gaze to her hip, to the ground beneath them both.

How long will it take? How long before she finds the courage, the dignity, to give her peace? How long-

“Athenril?”

 _Hawke_. It’s a voice she’s never been particularly glad to hear, except for once when her arm was opened nearly from finger to elbow. Now it’s not her, but she’s covered in just as much blood, and she looks up to the end of the alley. There’s no Bethany with him.

But there is a scruffy blonde-haired man with bandages wrapped around his boot as if to keep him from falling apart, and she can see his fingers twitching the same way Bethany’s used to when she wanted to cast but had to keep herself under control.

“Nice timing,” she says, voice unsteady, when all she really wants to say is  _help_.

“It’s what I’m good at,” Hawke replies. Any humor in the words are dampened by a grim gravity. “Anders-“

The mage steps forward and comes quickly to the other side of Hilgrud, whose next breath is a whining wheeze. Athenril can barely feel her pulse from where her fingers rest on her wrist.

She swallows.

“Get to it, boy.”


	25. Y is for Yearning

Athenril sits by the side of Hilgrud's bed, in a rented room in the Blooming Rose. She hasn't heard yet of the townhouse being taken, but it's only a matter of time. She never planned to run afoul of the Coterie. She's worked all her life to avoid it.

She never intended to deal in lyrium, either.

And she has never intended to deal in flesh, though on the way in a particularly destructive part of herself noticed a girl with a sweet face and honey eyes and curling dark hair that could almost, from one angle, look like Hawke's sister. But Hilgrud's labored breathing keeps her weighted and steady, as steady as she can be sitting in borrowed clothing because her armor was too filthy for Lusine to let her in the door. It's probably a blessing.

A blessing in the shape of one of the few people whose continued breathing matters to her. She looks the sleeping girl over and mutters, "Don't die."

She's said those words before, to another dark-haired Fereldan, another girl who was once in her care. There's no urge to kiss Hilgrud, though, only to smooth out her brow with a touch she doesn't know how to give. She keeps her hands in her lap instead, and wishes Lusine wouldn't mind wood shavings on the rug, a blade in her hand to carve.

(Then again, she doesn't want to hold a knife again anytime soon. The memory of the stomach giving under the press of steel- the catch of the blade on bone- she shuts the thought away. She's seen worse.)

Hilgrud will live, according to Hawke's mage. Hilgrud (or,  _the girl_ , or,  _the patient_ ) will live, as long as she has quiet, and liquids when she wakes, and food when she can. Hilgrud will live, barring Coterie thugs rushing neutral ground. The Coterie may own this place in one way or another, but one rule has always stood: no blood shed in the Rose.

She doesn't think it will go that far. They have their lyrium and the only one dead is her fool houseguest. He had wanted to see the stone his information had led her to. He had wanted to see what was going to make her rich.

She should have trusted the paranoia the lyrium seeded inside of her and never let him see it. It would have been much easier to hand over the damn thing if she hadn't had to cut it out of him. Maybe she would have been faster. Maybe Hilgrud-

Or maybe she wouldn't have given it up at all and they would both have been rotting corpses in an alley.

Hilgrud's arm slips from the bed, limp and too delicate in its gangliness. Athenril lifts her wrist and elbow gingerly, pausing only to look over the blue broken by swollen bruises up by her shoulder.

 _The only thing you have is you_.

She tucks her in.

The townhouse is gone, and the Coterie won't let her near any promising contracts now, not for another five or ten years at least. The city is about to fall apart if it doesn't sink into Darktown first. Hawke is ascendant, but it won't be for long if she knows this city at all.

And Hilgrud will only live with peace and quiet.

Maker, she's going to die- and Athenril has never put much stock in prayer. All she knows is that  _all things in this world are finite: what one man loses, another has gained_.

Bethany Hawke, Maker keep her soul, would know the right of it. Athenril can only hope that whoever gains from this suffers for it.

Let the Coterie burn. She will sit through it all in the tiny back room of a whorehouse.


	26. Z is for Zealots

It's all Kirkwall is.

 _Zealots_. She's watched it all. The city smokes and burns in their wake, every three years, every decade - it doesn't change. Before the chantry went up in a flash of light brilliant enough to wake the dead, before the heavens rained down flaming stone and ash, there were the Qunari. Before the Qunari, there were clashes between the Coterie and the Carta that went back to beliefs over  _territory_ , over  _possessions_ , over what was owed. Trace it back far enough, through shifts in power in the Gallows and the vagaries of foreign wars, and there were still stories of the old Tevinters who had nearly sunk the city in blood.

It never ends. Sometimes the city gets three decades of peace. Sometime only half a year. She's lived there for over half her life and she doesn't know the full extent of it, doesn't even know the full extent of how many elves left to join the Qun. She remembers the whispers of poison gas in the streets, plots of passion to fix problems of passion.

Even apathy is a pursued with a type of zeal in these winding streets and endless stairs. Those who do not care are dedicated to not caring. She walks by them when she wanders, hears how they quiet the complaints of others, how they ignore and excuse.

She lets it all move her, and then pushes on, loyal only to herself. Perhaps that's her own form of zealotry. But it's a comfortable one, if a lonely one, and it soothes her aching soul as she loses parts of the team she has built. They all think she believes they're expendable, and they act accordingly - get out or die. It never changes.

Except for Hilgrud. Hilgrud is different. Hilgrud struggles for breath in a little back room.

Perhaps she should change her methods.

Perhaps she should find a new city.

 

* * *

 

Hilgrud lives through the fires. Prayer has brought them nothing, if the rubble of the chantry is anything to go by. But Hilgrud lives through the chaos, and when they both emerge from the Blooming Rose to find the banners have been burned and torn down, the facade broken by all the falling stone, Hilgrud walks by her side all the way down to the docks. They prowl the streets.

There are corpses to loot, carrion to pick over. Neither does.

There's money to be made, for sure. When they walk all the way back up to Hightown, to look on the wreckage of the townhouse that would not have protected them, Athenril takes a mental inventory. There was gold in that house. There were trinkets, gifts, prizes beyond number. This, then, is the danger of a permanent home.

It can be destroyed.

In the days that follow, Hilgrud leaves her side more and more frequently. The Coterie is quiet, as it was after the qunari attacks. The streets are quiet. The rubble remains, nobody willing to clear it. One day there will be a memorial board with trite offerings.

Athenril looks instead at the smoking ruins.

 

* * *

 

"I've been thinking," Hilgrud says as they walk down by the docks once more. There are half-sunken ships in the harbor and the stone is streaked by singe marks, by the foul unnatural blood of demons. Athenril is glad that she missed the excitement.

"Good. At least somebody is these days," Athenril says, stepping over strewn rope. A few ships are still afloat, and she wonders if any are taking passengers. Sunny Antiva sounds good right now, if only for a season.

"I think I'm going to stay here."

Athenril comes to a halt, then glances behind her. "And I'm not?"

Hilgrud shrugs. "Are you?"

Athenril is quiet a moment, then shrugs in turn. "I was thinking about Antiva. For a season."

"I think I'll stay here."

She looks the girl up and down. Her breathing is still uneven, and the steps wind her. There are few pockets to pick when everybody is dressed in mourning clothes. There are few elves to charm. "What will you do while I'm gone?"

"Make a name for myself." The quiet girl smiles. "Or not. Maybe not having a name is better."

"Your choice."

Athenril has always liked her name just as it is.

Familiar voices that she cannot place drift over the rhythm of the breakers and the cries of vultures. They are at her back, and she watches for worry in Hilgrud's face. There is none. Slowly, Athenril turns.

Bethany Hawke approaches.

There is no Nevarran comb in her hair, and the years have changed her. She is not yet thin-cheeked, but it might still happen, and her eyes are haunted. The First Enchanter is dead; Athenril heard the news two days ago. No more gifted kisses, then, and no more silver hair shining in the sun.

Athenril swallows.

"Hello, Athenril," Bethany says, and her accent is still proudly, defiantly Fereldan despite the years. Perhaps the sunlight would have burned it away from her, had she been allowed to walk in it. "… It's been a long time."

"How is freedom treating you?" she hears herself say.

"Well. Though I hear the air on the open sea is fresher."

"If you can take the waves."

Bethany laughs, a hesitant thing, then glances between Athenril and Hilgrud. "… There's space on the ship. If you'd care to come with us." She holds out a pale hand, a hand soft from years of holding only a book or a staff. There are bruises further up beneath the fall of her sleeve; nobody's gotten out unharmed. But that hand-

Athenril stares at it.

 _Freedom_. She doesn't deal in flesh, but the city of chains has her tethered. To think that a chance to escape it might come in the form of Bethany Hawke, the girl who let herself be enslaved and the woman who sent her a kiss.

Athenril imagines placing her crippled hand in Bethany's, and curls her three good fingers into a loose fist. What- and then walk off into the sunset? Sail away on a pirate ship? 

"Sure," she says. "Why not?" And she walks to Bethany's side, returning the girl's smile with a lazy smirk that only barely hides how something in her twists and turns, undulates with uncertainty and excitement.

Behind her, Hilgrud clears her throat.

"I think I'll stay here."

There is pride in her voice, and a certain ease that Athenril doesn't expect so soon after the girl's first real brush with death, but Hilgrud has always been a true master of tone and cadence. Where once she was silent, now she cloaks herself with confidence. If she fears, she doesn't show it.

She can survive Kirkwall, gangly dog lord that she is.

Athenril shrugs, smirk easing to a smile, as Bethany says, "Maker keep you, then." She can have no idea who this Avvar girl is unless Hawke or Aveline has told her, but she blesses her all the same. That's Hawke's little sister, for certain.

She does know a few things still.

"Just remember what I've taught you, girl," Athenril says, her voice rougher than she expects. 

"Never deal in lyrium or flesh," Hilgrud says. "The only thing I have is me. And Kirkwall is a shithole of a town."

Athenril grins.

"Damn straight."


	27. Epilogue

Antiva. Wonderful, wretched, glorious Antiva is their first port of call on the long journey of  _running_. Athenril is on the dock and a decent distance away when she turns to watch the work of securing the ship. She is no deckhand, and never will be - almost a month even on favorable waves has reminded her of that.

They haven’t made port in the capital - that would have been too dangerous, just as Ostwick was too dangerous because of its size (or lack thereof) and Treviso was too dangerous because of its distance. They put in instead at Salle, a city she has never been in but recognizes immediately.

If there is one thing to this idea of  _nations_  instead of cities, it is that the culture is remarkably similar, enough that she is certain she can blend in if need be.

She’s interrupted by soft footsteps on the wood of the pier and a gentle clearing of a throat. “Maker, it’s hot,” Bethany says. “I didn’t  _know_  it could be this hot and sticky.”

“It’s just the same as on the boat,” Athenril replies, crossing her arms over her chest on instinct.

“But on the boat there’s a breeze.”

“Except for when we were becalmed outside of Hercinia.”  _Again_.

Bethany laughs and shakes her head. It’s a quiet thing, uncertain - she’s relearning mirth, or at least a sort of mirth that isn’t desperately defensive. “You’re determined to argue, I see.”

“I’m just appreciating having solid ground under my feet again.” She finally looks over her shoulder to her companion.

Bethany has her hair piled up on top of her head, her neck and shoulders bared. Isabela has leant her clothes, though where the pirate found them when she hasn’t bothered to dress herself in more than a shift for seven years, Athenril is not sure she wants to know. Bethany’s dress is the sort of low-cut thing that both women seem to favor, and the girl has given up her usual leggings in favor of a long but gauzy hemline.

Athenril looks back to her face. No sense in letting herself get caught up in  _maybes_. A month at sea, and they haven’t spoken once of exchanged kisses or  _don’t die_.

Bethany is smiling still. “Have you ever travelled so far?” she asks, head inclined slightly to one side. Her fingers tap a rhythm on her hip, and Athenril wonders if perhaps a month without magic (so as not to spook the crew) leaves her itching for it. Her own fingers twitch with the urge to do business.

But there’s no business to be done.

“Yes,” Athenril says, taking a few experimental steps away from the ship. Bethany follows, and Athenril switches to an easy stroll. “I’ve been to Antiva twice, actually.”

“On business, I take it?”

Athenril nods.

“… Do you think you’ll stay here?” Bethany adds, and Athenril slows, frowning and glancing back.

“Stay?”

“Now that you’re away from Kirkwall. If you’ve worked here before, I suppose…” Her shoulders roll, but there’s a hitch in the motion. “I mean, you don’t need to stay.”

Athenril doesn’t respond. She beckons instead and leads Bethany off the pier. The docks here are so different from Kirkwall’s; they sprawl, and the city unfolds from where they stand, no high stairs and sheer walls between them and it. It isn’t until the cry of gulls is muffled somewhat by a few meandering streets that Athenril turns back to Bethany, taking up a spot leaning against a wall, working her three good fingers on her right hand to hear the creak of leather, feel the resistance.

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Bethany Hawke?”

Bethany flushes. “I- no. That’s not what I mean. Maker, if I wanted  _that_ , I wouldn’t have…”

She trails off. Athenril feels a stammering flutter in her chest, but manages to keep it from her voice. “You wouldn’t have…?”

The girl -  _woman_ , Athenril thinks, and drives the thought home with a glance at her filled out curves, the tempered tragedy lurking in her eyes - looks away. She glances first in one direction, and then another, and Athenril only barely registers that she’s checking to see if they’re being watched before Bethany takes her good hand and leans in close enough to kiss her.

Her lips are soft and warm and hesitant. Athenril hisses in surprise, but catches her hip with one hand before she can pull away.

“… It’s not the same, having somebody else pass kisses along,” Bethany murmurrs.

“No,” Athenril says, firmly, giving her a tug closer. “It’s not.”

Bethany fits herself against her, soft curves against Athenril’s wiry frame. Athenril tops her by half an inch until she leans back against the stone of the wall behind her, letting Bethany lead in fumbling attempts. She doesn’t know quite where to put her lips or tongue, but she’s eager for all her nervousness. Athenril can appreciate that.

She can appreciate- a lot of this, really.

Athenril fumbles with her gloves, pulling the leather from her good hand so that she can trail her fingertips up the nape of Bethany’s neck, finding curling strands that have fallen loose of the pile. Her fingers curl against her skin, and Bethany giggles helplessly, breaking the kiss as she lets her head fall forward, forehead against the stone as she gasps raggedly for breath.

“Maker,” Bethany murmurs.

“Feeling adventurous these days?” Athenril replies, trying to sound as aloof and calm as she usually can manage- and failing at the edges.

Bethany pulls back with a crooked smile. “I’m dodging templars by setting sail with a notorious pirate. I think that’s a rather adventurous start to things.”

Athenril opens her mouth to counter, but her words dry up with the way Bethany’s fingers catch against her jaw, light and testing. She’s in a back alley in Antiva with a little fool mage girl (who isn’t so little, or so foolish these days) against her, miles from wretched Kirkwall with only a single long-reaching tether to ever urge her back. Bethany is no guardswoman in a storage closet. She’s warm and gentle and soft, and new to all of this if the giddy grin on her lips is any indication.

Because that grin can’t be because of her.

It can’t.

“Maybe…” Bethany says when the silence stretches too long. “Maybe… we could find somewhere to stay? With a bed instead of hammocks? Or- or maybe I could go back to the ship, if-“

“Shut up,” Athenril says, and kisses her again.

 

* * *

 

“I lost the comb,” Bethany says as Athenril sheds her knives and pouches. She’s sitting on the edge of a low bed that’s just wide enough for the two of them to be almost comfortable, feet flexed so her toes point up girlishly and her heels are the only part of her touching the floor. Her hands are even clasped in her lap. “It was in my room, in the Gallows, when- everything happened. I never got to go back for it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Athenril says, pausing.

Bethany shakes her head. “You went through so much trouble getting it for me. The templars could have-“

“But they didn’t,” Athenril cuts her off, then reaches up to undo the fasteners on her doublet. Bethany’s gaze follows her hands, and Athenril hesitates, fingers around a knot. “We don’t have to do this,” she says.

A kiss is well enough. A kiss is not so- dangerous, as this. A day alone with Bethany Hawke, who has teased at her thoughts for nearly a decade, and from thenre still more weeks at sea-

“I want to,” Bethany says. “I- I’ve thought about it. Before. And I’d rather do it somewhere private, where Isabela can’t worm her way into it.”

“She would,” Athenril says with a huff of laughter, then lets her hands drop in favor of crossing the space between them. She reaches for Bethany, cupping her face in her hands. “You tell me to stop, I stop. And we can forget this ever happened.”

“And if I ask you to never stop?” Bethany asks, voice hitching.

“I’ll call you a fool girl a few times, and then give in,” Athenril returns, quietly, and bows her head to brush her nose against hers.

“I didn’t think I’d ever-” Bethany manages, then shakes her head, lifting her hands to Athenril’s waist. “That is, I never thought I’d see you again. And I thought it was just a girl’s crush-“

“Still might be,” Athenril says, nudging her back and planting a narrow knee between her legs. “Don’t write that off yet.”

“I missed you,” Bethany says, pulling her close enough to kiss.

 _You shouldn’t have_  doesn’t get a chance to pass her lips. Instead she dips into the kiss, hands rucking up the soft fabric of Bethany’s dress. She isn’t wearing much underneath, just a scrap of fabric tied at her hips - Isabela’s influence again, no doubt. Or perhaps Bethany is a little more clever, a little more devious, than she gives her credit for.

“Take off your gloves,” Bethany mumbles against her lips, her cheek, and Athenril hesitates just a moment, just long enough for her to repeat it. “Take off your gloves. I want to feel you-“

“Both of them?” Athenril murmurs back, even as Bethany’s arms tighten around her enough to draw her down to the mattress, their legs tangling on instinct. For a brief moment, Athenril half-expects the girl to freeze up at the graze of one calloused toe against her calf, but she doesn’t. All she does is seek out Athenril’s hands with her own.

“Of course both of them.” She has a girlish little smile with a chiding edge of  _you should know better_  as she pulls Athenril’s good hand between them, working the leather off. “Are these the same gloves? After all these years?”

Athenril nods, transfixed, as Bethany tugs the last of it free, then reaches for the other.

“They’re very nice.”

“You’re speaking platitudes,” Athenril mutters, and Bethany can only laugh as she tries to ease the splinted leather from her deadened fingers. “No- pull down. More. There-“

The leather pulls free and Bethany’s laughter dies in the air.

“I did this,” Bethany says, thumb running along the tendon of her littlest finger. The digit is discolored and withered, and always will be, and Athenril thinks to pull away.

“What?” she says to cover her unease. “Kept it attached to my arm? Kept me from taking fever?”

“Lost it for you. If I were a better healer…” She falls silent, then dips her head to kiss the tip of her finger. “I’m sorry.”

And then her lips move up over the blue curls tracing along the back of her hand, then further up, and Athenril realizes that if she doesn’t act, she’ll be lost to this. And so her other hand once more slips beneath Bethany’s dress, teasing and quick to undo the ties of her smalls. She’s met with a surprised gasp and a little giggle, Bethany’s lips pausing.

A gentle touch against her thigh, and she lets go of Athenril’s hand. From there it’s an easy matter to pull her dress from her, to unwrap her breasts and lay kisses upon them. Bethany either is not used to the struggle or doesn’t care one inch about it- she yields, and Athenril straddles her, her hands exploring while Bethany arches and squirms, watches with widened eyes that become half-lidded, parted lips that redden without another touch.

It’s a smarter position, giving. She can always run.

She can also earn sighs and whimpers as her lips close around one nipple and its broad areola, hands hefting the weight in teasing strokes. Athenril closes her eyes to drink them in, tongue wrapping around the hardened nub of it. She takes her time. She can’t remember the last time she went slowly, breathed cold across saliva-slicked flesh and felt it pebble, dropped kisses along a woman’s breast bone until she felt the next swell.

If she listens, she can hear Bethany’s heartbeat in the lull between whispers.

It matches her own in tempo and ferocity, and eventually, it’s what drives her down, sliding along Bethany’s body as the girl tangles her hands in the bedding. Athenril runs her hands over the curves and valleys of her. Her dead fingers feel nothing, but her mind fills in the gaps, all smooth warmth and curling hair. She dips her head to kiss her navel, nuzzles her nose against her belly until Bethany whines and squirms, spreading her legs further as if to urge her on. Her hands flutter, unsure of where to rest: first her breast, then her lips, then hovering over Athenril’s hair.

Athenril grins lazily and nips at her skin until it reddens just a little.

“Wicked, wicked-” Bethany mumbles, arching, and Athenril settles a hand on her thigh.

“Impatient thing. Just think back to all those long nights of standing vigil.”

“It’s nowhere near the same!”

“Sure it is.” She leaves another nip, this time lower. “Endless, frustrating waiting, but with the promise of something glorious at the end of it. Whether it’s coin or-” another nip- “pleasure.”

“Do you-  _ah_ \- often get pleasure in return for your work?” Bethany gasps, arching again as Athenril shifts to nuzzling at her inner thigh, pointed ear dragging against sensitive flesh. But at her question, Athenril takes time to pause. She lifts her head.

“No,” she says. “Almost never.”

Bethany stares back down at her, cheeks more flushed than before, and then hooks a leg over Athenril’s shoulder.

“Well-“

“This isn’t work,” Athenril cuts her off, then parts her with long, calloused fingers. Bethany sighs and lets her head fall back, and Athenril bows her head, running patterns with her tongue over Bethany’s slick and swollen folds.

Brennan was the aggressor of sorts the last time, sinking between her legs and shoving them wide. Athenril is gentler. She matches the passes of her tongue to Bethany’s groans, not pushing any further than her body stirs. Bethany’s fingers wind into her hair, knocking it loose from its bun, but Athenril hardly notices; she’s too busy learning the taste and heat of her, and thinking in the back of her mind what those hands are capable of. The elements at her control, and Athenril has her spread across the bed, hips canted and toes curling.

Not bad.

And more importantly, it’s  _Bethany_. It’s the girl who gave up freedom and leashed her imagination, who  _didn’t die_ , and Athenril takes a great deal of pleasure in sliding two fingers into her, working her open as she suckles at her nub. Bethany cries out, louder than before, and Athenril thinks she hears her name. She definitely hears _Maker_.

There are no pleas to stop, no hesitations, only  _pleases_  and  _mores_  from that moment on. Athenril remains slow and methodical, endlessly focused. The press of her belt into her hips keeps her focused on what is before her only. Soft thighs against her shoulders, damp curls brushing her cheek, and the particular taste of  _woman_  coating her tongue.

When Bethany comes, it’s with a sudden cessation of noise. She falls silent, arched and stiff, and Athenril lifts her head to see Bethany’s eyes tightly shut, lips parted, brow contorted.

Another detail to learn and memorize. There are so many, and as she at last lets down Bethany’s legs and sits up on her heels, wiping the back of her hand across her lips, she has to fight to look anywhere that isn’t the endless expanse of  _her_. Her hair curls against the pillow, her skin is flushed in blotches down to almost her belly, her breasts fall to either side of her chest. Her fingers curl just slightly. Her knees-

Athenril looks down at herself and begins to undo buttons. She slides her leggings off, though they stick to sweat and heated flesh. She bares herself to Bethany, who watches through lidded eyes.

“I’ve never seen a naked elf,” Bethany says, that same uneven smile on her lips, and Athenril only laughs.

“Never went to the Rose?”

Her blush brightens again. “I- no.”

“Didn’t think so,” Athenril says as she tosses the last of her clothing away and settles down on the mattress. Bethany reaches out and touches gingerly the blue lines that twine across her body, the patterns on one hip. “Like what you see?”

Bethany nods, hand and eyes sliding back up until she cups Athenril’s cheek. She opens her mouth as if to speak, then says nothing, pressing her face to the pillow instead.

“No need to be embarrassed,” Athenril laughs.

“No. You’re right.”

But she’s a sheltered girl - or at least Athenril hopes so. She hopes the Gallows walls protected her in some way. For a brief moment she thinks of templar armor, and the rumors of what went on-

Bethany rolls onto her side and twines her body with Athenril’s, until her thigh rests between her leg and she can move in subtle shifts. Athenril huffs a laugh.

“You don’t-“

“I want to,” Bethany breathes, even though sated exhaustion weights her breath. “Just a little. Don’t you want something in return?”

“We have time.”

But Bethany’s hand slips down all the same, not following the lines of her tattoos or any lines at all except towards her goal. Her fingers slide between Athenril’s hips and her thigh, and she rolls her finger in experimental patterns. She seeks Athenril’s lips, and Athenril dots kisses on her jaw, then presses her forehead to her shoulder, watching between them even as her body flushes.

She’s biting her lip, shivering with the thrums of pleasure echoing up through her body. Bethany is lazy, with no trace of insistence in her breathing or her touch. It’s all too easy to get lost in it. It’s all too easy to give in.

But for an afternoon…

She groans when Bethany’s languid touches finally bring her to the edge, her first sound of approval. She imagines Bethany’s smile, thick and heavy like the slow ache that uncurls from inside of her. Bethany Hawke, in her bed, hands learning new methods of distraction-

Athenril closes her eyes and presses her lips to Bethany’s shoulder, then tips her chin up to be met with a shower of kisses.

There’s no need for blankets, even with the sweat cooling on their skin; the day is still full and warm, the breeze still sluggish. Her eyes skim over Bethany’s body even as she tucks herself against it. Where Athenril is narrow, Bethany is broad; where Athenril’s skin reveals bone beneath, Bethany’s shows only softness.

Bethany clears her throat, and Athenril glances up.

“What are you thinking?” Bethany sighs, half-asleep.

“Nothing,” Athenril returns with a light kiss. “Nothing at all.”

She doesn’t want to say aloud that she’s memorizing the whole of her, from the temperature of her skin to the way her breasts rise and fall with each hitching breath. Bethany Hawke is beautiful, and has for so long been only an idea, a thought, a memory. And ideas evaporate, given enough time. Bethany Hawke will disappear, whether into freedom or another kind of enslavement.

She shouldn’t let herself get attached, but there’s no way that she can pass up this opportunity to have her close, if only for one afternoon.

Perhaps with that done, the obsession will fade. Or perhaps this  _will_  be what kills her, the way she thought it might all those years ago.

 

* * *

 

Later, lying indolent in bed with the sun slanting through the window and the sounds of the Salle streets drifting in along with a sluggish breeze, Bethany tells her about her first kiss. It was with a girl in Lothering, she says, who had pretty red hair and bright eyes, and it was small and quick. And then it was much less small, and far less quick, until they were laughing in a pile of hay.

At first, Athenril envies her. It seems simple. Easy.

And then Bethany frowns and says that the next day, the girl refused to look at her. And the day after, she hurled abuse, and Bethany lost what little freedom she had to move about town.

Athenril has one arm draped over her, her front pressed to Bethany’s back, her other arm pillowed beneath Bethany’s head. She doesn’t offer any stories of  _her_  first kiss, because it was unpleasant and she chooses not to remember it. She doesn’t offer stories of the various trysts she’s had, spread out over the years and almost all on impulse, quick things with no meaning. Part of her doesn’t want Bethany to disapprove, to refuse to look at her the way that girl in Lothering did to  _her_. And part of her doesn’t want to admit that this isn’t on impulse, this isn’t quick, and that there’s a meaning there.

So instead she slides her hand along Bethany’s waist and stomach, and dips it lower to a surprised inhalation, Bethany turning to look at her with wide, amber eyes.

Athenril smirks and bows her head to kiss her throat.

“Again?” Bethany asks, a little bit breathless.

“Of course again.” Bethany’s thighs are warm, and the center of her is warmer. “Or did your books make it seem like once was all you ever needed.”

“ _My_  books-“

“I’m sure Isabela’s didn’t.” She wrinkles her nose and Bethany laughs, then groans and squirms.

“I…”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t read books about love and princes?”

She whimpers. “Mm, of course- but I knew they weren’t real. Besides, a girl like me-“

“Deserves better than some pox-ridden prince,” Athenril purrs, and Bethany is caught between a laugh and a moan. “Deserves better than a girl who can’t own up to her own wants.”  _Deserves better than a smuggler._

“And you?” Bethany asks, and Athenril wishes she would forget how to speak. “I want to- I want to deserve you-“

“Shut up,” Athenril says, a little too hastily, as Bethany’s hand finds her hip, as she tries to turn to face her. Athenril looks away, searching the wall for something to distract her. “You-“

There. A shadow. But it’s not the shadow of a bird at the window, or a flapping banner, or the setting of the sun. It’s-

“ _Down!_ ” Athenril shouts, and she yanks hard, rolling them both off the bed and onto the floor just as a crossbow bolt strikes the wall, in line with where they would have been. She disentangles herself from Bethany in an instant, fumbling for her clothes, her belt, her knife. Bethany rises to a crouch, and from the corner of her eye she sees a flash of light.

Fire leaps to life and a man screams. Athenril pulls her blade free and backs up, looking for the source. By the door, two men, one clutching his face. And at the window-

“Bethany!”

The mage spins, lifting a hand with her fingers clawing towards a fist. One of their attackers lifts with it, and then is tossed like a discarded doll across the room. Athenril sees a flash of livery, but she doesn’t need to to know.

 _Crows_. Dammit. Old Crows, coming home to roost on a job long left undone.

Athenril darts towards the window, catching the next assassin off guard and shoving him down to the street below. It’s a three-story drop, and she doesn’t bother lingering to see if he survives. She ducks low again as the air grows heavy, heavier even than heat can make it. 

She hasn’t fought alongside a mage in years, but she remembers the thrum of Bethany’s magic well enough, just as she has remembered her voice and spirit. She catches the stomach of a woman with her blade just as Bethany jerks her forward onto it, and she dances back when the flames come again. She has never claimed to understand magic, but she knows how to work with it.

Another assassin climbs in the window. She waits for Bethany to turn, but as she does Athenril can only see Hilgrud turning to meet the mace that almost claimed her life. She shouts.

The man falls dead, mouth open with flames dancing in his throat.

She shocks herself back into movement just before a strike to the gut can do it for her, dancing left and then behind. She straightens to her full height and pulls her attacker back until she can slit his throat, blood running hot over her bare hands. She growls, teeth bared, and shoves him away before it can coat her chest and belly.

He’s the last one.

Athenril stares across it to where Bethany is standing, breasts hanging heavy and flushed. There’s not a spot of blood on her, and her skin seems to glow from within, no doubt from the crackle of magic that will likely bring templars within a day.

“What was-” Bethany pants, and Athenril smiles grimly.

“Crows.”

“Oh.” She looks around the room. “… Business in Antiva?”

“Yeah.”

Her leg shifts, and Athenril follows it down - she’s rolling the ball of her foot against the floor idly. “… What do we do now?” Bethany asks at last.

Athenril lifts a brow. “We  _run_.”

“Oh, good. I’ve gotten decent at that part.” Her smile is lopsided and quick. “A lifetime of running with a small break in the middle - it’s good to be back.”

“Crows are a little different from templars.”

“Nothing like a little danger to bring us together,” Bethany says, shaking her head, and Athenril snorts.

“You’ve got a toppled sense of humor, girl.”

“I get it from my father,” Bethany says as she pulls her dress back on, not bothering to tie her hair up again. There’s no time for that. “Maybe I can tell you about him sometime?”

 

* * *

 

When Hawke’s ship leaves Salle behind, Athenril is once more on deck. It’s only been three days, but she’s lost her sea legs and it takes her another week to find them again.

It’s a little bit easier, though, with a mage to sit beside her. Conversation goes a long way to soothing aches and nausea, and a soft lap is the best pillow she could have asked for.

Perhaps adventure  _is_  the sort of life for her.


End file.
